Micro and macro Intergenerational oral communication in the Zion Christian Church

Abstract

This chapter looks at the cultural significance of poetry that is presented orally within the Zion Christian Church (ZCC). While such poetry belongs to the African Initiated Church's oral tradition, my method of analyzing this mode of oral tradition is one that assumes that as a source of oral history, oral data are situated within specific cultures. It is as a result of this vantage point that historians like Prins (1991:119) could observe that historians should not presume serial time in dealing with oral traditions of different peoples. He cautions that 'serial time is not the only sort of time that men use' (1991:119). The other Western hegemonic use approach of history writing that Prins (1991:119) would like to see changing is one in which change is seen as the main index of historical content because 'there are other things than change to explain.' I test these theoretical perspectives in my close analysis of the poetry aspect of the ZCC oral tradition, using the oral historical method.