Technauriture as Contemporary Oral Literature: A Case of Bishop Chomba’s ‘Isa Umone Efyo Lungu Acita’ Song

Abstract

The article uses Bishop Chomba’s Isa Umone song to argue that oral literature exists in contemporary society albeit in the form of technauriture – the result of the interplay between orality, literacy, and technology. Bishop Chomba breaks into a spontaneous panegyric when asked to call upon the then Zambian President Edgar Lungu during the commissioning of the Arcades fly-over bridge in 2020.  Anchored by Mostert and Kaschula’s (2011) idea of technauriture, we deconstruct the dichotomised assumption that oral literature does not exist in present day society because it belongs to the past which ceases to exist once other media such as writing and technology emerge. On the contrary, we take a qualitative, case study approach to use the purposively sampled song, Isa Umone and highlight aspects of oral literary characteristics drawn from the initial performance of the song. Furthermore, we explore various online versions of the song as a way of establishing the workings of technauriture. Our findings reveal that technauriture acts in such a way that rather than being the death of oral literature, technology now facilitates the means by which orality survives and is perpetuated when spatial and temporal coverage are not limited to human custodians. Particularly, the associated threat of extinction should they die with the knowledge or oral art they possess. Furthermore, the paper demonstrates how technology provides the paradigm through which aspects of lecto-orality, remediation, repurposing and reoralisation provide new ways in which orality harnesses new technologies assuring its continued existence.