Poetry
Ça tire sous le Sahel
Not translated into English
Titinga Frédéric Pacéré · 1976
Synopsis
Six poems of unequal length, subtitled satires, running through with recurring refrains. The first and longest, “L'Appel du tambour”, follows a Mossi ritual: before any important undertaking, the drum gathers the people, and the presence of archers announces that an attack is being prepared. The poems parade the peoples of the Sahel, Fulani, Bossa, Goin, Djerma and still others.
Context
The collection appeared in 1976 in Paris, from Pierre Jean Oswald, the same year as two other books of poems by its author, whose titles likewise evoke the Sahel and its birds. It transposes into written verse the devices of the Mossi drum language, refrains, repetitions and calls, which its author later studied under the name of bendrology and to which he devoted several books.
Who it is for
Six poems in French, one of them long, whose form is inspired by talking drums: a few points of reference on this Mossi language shed light on their construction.
Prizes and reception
The University of Ouagadougou devoted a research dissertation to it, and Léon Yepri studies it in his 1999 essay on the author.