Harrell - Oral Traditions

A writeup posted by the United Nations entitled, Oral Traditions and Expressions, describes how oral traditions help keep culture alive. The article describes how oral traditions and expressions encompasses an enormous variety of spoken forms including proverbs, riddles, tales, nursery rhymes, legends, myths, epic songs and poems, charms, prayers, chants, songs, dramatic performances and more. The author describes that Oral traditions and expressions are used to pass on knowledge, cultural and social values and collective memory. Because of all of this, the author concludes that they play a crucial part in keeping cultures alive. Diving deeper into the topic, the author describes that like other forms of intangible cultural heritage, oral traditions are threatened by rapid urbanization, large-scale migration, industrialization and environmental change. Books, newspapers and magazines, radio, television and the Internet can have an especially damaging effect on oral traditions and expressions. Modern mass media may significantly alter or over replace traditional forms of oral expression. Epic poems that once took several days to recite in full may be reduced to just a few hours and traditional courtship songs that were sung before marriage may be replaced by CDs or digital music files. I find that this article can be seen as another great example of content discussed in class translated into the real world.

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