Tale
Kpelle Tales
Kpelle woli-kaa
Anonymous · 1930
Synopsis
The hare and the spider who trick the powerful, riddles that the storyteller poses between two tales, and songs in which the audience takes up the refrain while the story goes on. The session is worth as much as the tale: they are not recited, they are led, and the listener answers. The printed collections keep the letter of them and necessarily lose this sharing, which is half of the thing.
Context
The woli-kaa are the Kpelle tales, told in alternation with songs, the storyteller leading and the audience responding. Kpelle has a script of its own, a syllabary invented around 1930 by a chief named Gbili, to whom it is said to have appeared in a dream: it is one of the few writing systems created in West Africa, along with Vai and Bassa, in a region that has several. These inventions answered the observation that writing was an instrument of power that others possessed. The Kpelle syllabary has eighty-eight signs. Gbili died shortly after spreading his script.
Who it is for
Short tales inseparable from songs. The published collections are mostly in English and French.
Prizes and reception
The invented scripts of the region are the subject of academic research and digitisation programmes.