Citation: Aminu, A., Jibrin, B.D. & Al-Hassan, B.S.Y. (2024). Sa’idu Faru and His Subordinate Mu’azu in the Song Waƙar Mamman Sarkin Kudu: A Multilogue Implicature in a Dialogue. Four Decades of Hausa Royal Songs: Proceedings from the International Conference on the Life and Songs of Makaɗa Sa'idu Faru, 3(3), 431-436. www.doi.org/10.36349/tjllc.2024.v03i03.059.
Sa’idu Faru and His Subordinate Mu’azu in the Song Waƙar Mamman Sarkin Kudu: A Multilogue Implicature in a Dialogue
By
Abdulmalik Aminu, Ph D
Department of African
Languages and Cultures,
Ahmadu Bello University,
Zaria, Nigeria
aaminu@abu.edu.ng, abdulmalik.aminu@gmail.com
08138402892
and
Jibrin Bala Dambo Ph D
Institute of Education
Ahmadu Bello University,
Zaria, Nigeria
08023758352
and
B.S.Y. Al-Hassan
Department of African
Languages and Cultures
Ahmadu Bello University,
Zaria, Nigeria
08032171723
Abstract
This is pragmatic research
which focuses on the implicature in Sa’idu Faru’s song. The song is a musical
composition performed by the human voice. The song may be performed by a solo
singer, a lead singer supported by background singers (backing vocalists) a
duet, a trio, or more voices singing in harmony. Apart from the melody that the
voices carry in songs, meanings in the conversations in a song play a crucial
role in identifying an implicature. Implicature are utterances and what is
understood from them. As it is known in all his songs, Sa’idu Faru is the lead in
his songs as in the song Waƙar Mamman Sarkin Kudu
supported by vocalists, one of them is Mu’azu. However, in this song, as
provided in some lines, Mu’azu is as important as the lead singer, which also,
the vocalists are part that provides vocal harmony with the lead singer. If
Mu’azu can be a vocalist like any other, then it is a dialogue between the lead
and the vocalists but in this case where Mu’azu takes control in the
conversation, then the song may be termed a duet. The conversational
implicature in the song guided the researcher to understand that the song is a duet.
The paper attempts to answer questions such as how are successive utterances
related, who controls the discourse, how he does it and, how other participants
take control. Gricean Maxims are adopted in the analyses of this paper.
Keywords: Song, Implicature,
Dialogue, Multilogue, Vocalist, Conversation
1.
Introduction
Language is not just a medium
of communication, but also an ‘object’ used side by side with musical
instruments for entertainment. The song as a musical composition is performed
by the human voice which carries the melody. The singer is concerned with the careful
selection of words, and the arrangements of the words to form phrases, clauses
and sentences that can suit the melody of his voice in his song. The literary critic
is thus concerned with what is the theme of the song, the style used and the
structure of the song, while the semantician is concerned with the meanings in
the utterances. The pragmatist is concerned with the functions of linguistic
utterances and the propositions that are expressed by them, depending upon
their use in specific situations (Trauth and Kazzazi 1998: 926).
Pragmatics is a subdiscipline
of linguistics developed from different linguistic, philosophical and
sociological traditions that studies the relationships between natural language
expressions and their uses in specific situations (Trauth and Kazzazi 1998:
926). Pragmatics concerning music might be strange to some scholars of
literature because they see the two as unrelated and doubt if there is a way
the pragmatics will fit into songs, especially oral songs. However, there is a
very interesting area for concern by pragmatists in the whole conversations
that take place between the singer and his vocalists regardless of the beatings
of the instruments or the melody of the voices. Vocalizing in a song is the
speech by the subordinate in a song (Gusau, 2003: 38). The vocalist is,
therefore, a subordinate of a lead singer who makes a speech in a song. The
vocalists are subordinates of the lead singer who respond to the speeches of
the lead singer. The dialogue between the lead singer and the vocalists in the
performance is key in determining the theme the style and even the category of
the song. Not only that, the dialogue also determines the ‘communicative acts’
between the lead singer and his subordinate. There are four levels of joint
actions in communicative acts as stipulated by Clark (2006:368) as follows:
In the above table, about
oral songs, Speaker A may be considered as the lead singer while Addressee B
may be considered as the vocalist(s). Level four is a situation where the
singer proposes a joint project to the vocalists and the vocalists consider the
lead singer’s proposal, that is to say, the lead singer sang and the vocalists
replied. Conversely, if the lead singer considers one of the vocalist’s
proposals, then the direction of the communicative act has changed. Hence, the
conversation is not a dialogue any longer but a multilogue, in which case, the
direction of A to B, B to A is moved further to A to B, C, B to A, and C to A.
A dialogue that changes to a multilogue
in an oral song changes the category of the song from lead singer and vocalists
to a category of ‘duet’. A Duet is a song performed by two singers. It is the
opposite of Solo which is performed by one singer. A duet is found in animals
as well, where bird species combine to produce coordinated duets. Bispham
(2006: 128) stated that in about 6% of birds species pairs, combine to produce
coordinated duets. In some species, two birds coordinate alternating calls with
such precision that it is impossible to tell that two birds are involved from
the auditory signal alone. He further explained duets in human music, the
mechanisms used to achieve coordination between individuals, as though not yet
understood. However, observations of the duet do suggest that there a strong
relationships that exist between the rate of hoots, levels of kinesthetic
movement and degrees of emotional excitement in both animates. Thus, in
Pragmatics, one of the mechanisms used to achieve coordination between
individuals in songs is Implicature. Therefore, this paper aims to describe how
conversational implicature is used to change the category of Sa’idu Faru’s song
Waƙar Mamman Sarkin Kudu from the usual Lead and Vocalists
to Duet.
2.
Implicature
Implicature is called by
Grice in Horn and Ward (2006: xii) as the aspect of speaker meaning that
distinguishes what is (strictly) said from what is (more broadly) meant. Horn
(2006:3) defines Implicature as “a component of speaker meaning that
constitutes an aspect of what is meant in a speaker’s utterance without being
part of what is said”. Simply, implicature is the understanding of the meaning
of what is said by either the speaker or the listener. From table four above,
implicature plays a role in the dialogue between speaker A and speaker B in the
communicative act at level three. The speaker means something to the listener
and the listener understands what the speaker means. If not, the listener may
not consider the speaker’s proposal in level four of the communicative act. For
instance in the song, the lead singer Sa’idu and the vocalists, without being
part of the lead utterance, the vocalists understood what he meant and
continued with the statement without hesitation as follows:
Sa’idu: Alhamdulillahi…
‘praise be to Allah…’
Vocalists: Shukurni…
‘I thank…’
Rabbil
Alamina ni nau nufi.
‘the creator I meant.’
Sa’idu: Ka
san…
‘You know…’
Vocalists: Kiɗi ba karatu ba na
‘song is not a study’
Mui
astangafari in mun gama
‘we seek forgiveness after we finished’
Sa’idu: Ka
san kiɗi…
‘You know song…’
Vocalists: Ba
karatu ba na
‘is not a study’
Mui
astangafari in mun gama
‘we seek forgiveness after we finished’
From the above lines, one can
deduce the meaning and understanding between the lead and the vocalists’
conversation respectively. The component of Sa’idu’s meaning constitutes an
aspect of what is meant in his utterance without being part of what is said.
The vocalists infer that Sa’idu had intended to convey what he vocalized. In
this instance, it is called ‘a particularized conversational implicature’. Particularized Implicature is where a speaker
conveys a message which is inferred by a listener who responds accordingly. Alternatively,
a generalized implicature is a sentence implicature with its regular meaning.
The particularized and generalized are two fronts of implicature that regulate
meaning in conversation. Albeit, whether generalized or particularized, conversational
implicature derives from the shared presumption that the speaker and hearer are
interacting rationally and cooperatively to reach a common goal (Horn, 2006:6).
3.
Dialogue
Dialogue is a conversation
between two people or a person and a group of people. In any given speech, the
speaker may either converse with a listener and the listener responds or the
speaker makes a speech that requires no response from the listener. Meyer
(2009:85) provided the following figure:
From the above figure, a
speech can be divided into two: Monologue and Dialogue. The monologue is an
instance whereby the speaker makes a speech that requires no response from the
listener while in the dialogue, the speaker converses with a listener and the
listener responds. The dialogue is a way of conversation while the monologue is
one-way speech. In oral songs, a singer may be solo, singing and using his
musical instruments alone; or a lead singer and vocalist(s), having a dialogue;
or a duet, two singers having a proportionate conversation with or without
vocalist(s). Alhaji Ɗanmaraya Jos is a typical example of a solo singer in Hausa land
who sings and uses musical instruments without company. He requires no response
from a listener and therefore his song in this context is termed Monologue. On
the other hand, Alhaji Mamman Shata’s songs are a case of a dialogue between
him and his subordinates. Although, more often than not, the vocalists repeat a
chorus from the beginning of the song to the end with no conversation. Also, a
song with no dialogue is the song of Abdu Karen Gusau, for instance in the song
Tsakanin Ɗan adam da Kuɗi where all through the song,
the vocalists answer the same chorus.
Typical songs with dialogues
are songs of Alhaji Sa’idu Faru and the songs of Ɗanƙwairo whereby in almost every
two to three lines, the vocalists collectively respond to the lead singer and
even collectively initiate a conversation which is responded to by the lead. For
instance, in some lines 4-7 in the song of Waƙar Mamman Sarkin Kudu as follows:
Sa’idu: Na sarkin Gobir Amadu,
‘a friend to the emir of
Gobir Amadu’
Karɓi: Na sarkin Gobir Amadu
‘a friend to the emir of
Gobir Amadu’
Sa’idu: Na sarkin Gobir Amadu,
‘a friend to the emir of
Gobir Amadu’
Karɓi: Ci-fansa gagon Sarkin Ƙaya.
‘Revenge, the hero of the emir
of Ƙaya’.
From the above lines, one
will determine the dialogue between the lead and the vocalists is
bidirectional. To some extent, the vocalists even initiated a conversation to
complement or qualify the lead as shown in the last line. In some of the oral
songs like the Ɗanƙwairo and the likes, apart from the vocalists in the group
initiating a conversation, individual vocalists also initiate a conversation
which would be complemented by the vocalists, in such cases, it is called
multilogue.
4.
Multilogue
Multilogue is a situation
whereby more than two individuals or groups of people have a conversation by
which one is the initiator, and two or more individuals or groups are the
correspondents. As it was mentioned
earlier, a monologue is solo, dialogue is lead and vocalist(s), and then a multilogue
may be referred to as a duet. A dialogue that changes to a multilogue in an
oral song changes the category of the song from lead singer and vocalists to a
category of ‘duet’. A Duet is a song performed by two singers of equal rank. A
duet in some instances might consist of two singers of equal ranks with
corresponding vocalists complementing the two singers. If anything, Sa’idu
Faru’s song Waƙar Mamman Sarkin Kudu is qualified to be called a duet because of
the importance of the conversation between the Lead and one of the vocalists
known as Mu’azu. The following are some of the
conversations in the song:
Sa’idu: Mai roƙon…
‘a beggar of’
Karɓi: Riga ‘yaddiga,
‘a dignified cloth’
In an ba shi kore amsa yakai.
‘he will accept if given a
useless one’
Mu’azu: Babban mutum mai da gaba buki
a big man that turns
competition into a ceremony’
Kada kai buki in da burtuttuki
‘do not celebrate where there
is chaos’
Sa’idu: Haka nan fa…
‘certainly’
Mu’azu: Idan fasiƙi gun baraukin buki,
‘if a coward disregards a
ceremony’
Wada dut Sarki yaƙ ƙasura
‘Whoever that the king
cursed’
Wada dut Sarki ya’ gunguma
‘whoever that the king
rejected’
Karɓi: In ba alheri yai yi ba…
‘if he has not done
generosity…’
Daudu ko yai Magana ƙarya shikai.
‘Daudu if he talk he lies
Sa’idu: In ba alhe…
‘if he is not gene…
Karɓi: ri yai yi ba,
‘ous he has done,’
Daudu ko yai Magana maisai gara.
‘Daudu even if he talks take him as a fool’
From the above lines, Mu’azu
has taken over the conversation from the lead Sa’idu Faru on two occasions. Not
only the number of times that he has taken over that matters but he also served
as the initiator of the conversation. Therefore, three groups are conversing
with one another. The first is Sa’idu, the second is Mu’azu and the third is
the vocalists. They are all guided by cooperative principles in taking over the
conversation from one another. In cooperative principles, a set of assumptions guides
someone in conversation (Amrullah, 2015). Every conversation must obey the four
maxims of conversation presented by Grice (1975).
5.
Grice
(1975) Maxims and Sa’idu Faru’s Song
What is said that is
different from what is meant is termed by Grice as Conventional Implicature.
What is said that is very obviously distinct from what is being said is also
termed Non-conventional Implicature. Grice (1975:43) stated that Conversational
Implicature is a subclass of non-conventional implicature which has the aspect
of conventionality in it, and it is essentially connected with general features
of discourse. The general features of discourse arise as a result of the cooperative
principle. The Cooperative Principle states that “if our talk exchanges are to
be rational, they must consist of utterances which are in some way connected”. To
comply with this principle, speakers need to follow many maxims as follows:
i.
Maxim of Quantity;
ii.
Maxim of Quality;
iii.
Maxim Relevance; and
iv.
Maxim of Manner
The Maxim of Quantity relates
to the amount of information to be provided that is not more than required. The
Maxim of Quality relates to the statements that are truthful with facts. The
Maxim of Relevance is to be relevant by providing new information with
background knowledge. The Maxim of Manner is concerned with what is said as
much as how it is said, such as being brief, being orderly, avoiding ambiguity,
and avoiding obscurity.
i.
In the song of Waƙar Mamman Sarkin Kudu, Mu’azu has
provided an information that is not more than what is required as in the lines
58, 60, and 62 as follows:
Mu’azu: Ɗan
gauraka ko kunkumi,
Waɗanda salla kullum sukai
Sa’idu: Haka nan fa
Mu’azu: Ɗan
tankarki ko hasbiya
Waɗanda salla kullum sukai
Sa’idu: Haka nan fa
Mu’azu: Don ka ga yammoli da
shamuwa,
Waɗanda sallah kullum sukai
Sa’idu: Haka nan fa
Translated, sourced from
Yakawada’s archives as follows:
Mu’azu: As
for the crested crane or the white ibis
Those
ones pray every day
Sa’idiu:
That is right!
Mu’azu: As
for the black-billed buzzard or the wild pigeon
Those
ones pray every day
Sa’idu:
That is right
Mu’azu:
Just look at the ‘yammoli bird and the white-billed stork
Those ones pray every day
From the above lines, one can
understand that Mu’azu has given adequate and required information through some
metaphors which Sa’idu has accepted and agreed with the statements. The
information given by Mu’azu is adequate and not more than what is required.
ii.
Statements that are truthful with facts are
stated by Mu’azu in lines 31 and 33 as follows:
Mu’azu: tun ran da Allahu yai duniya
Sa’idu: haka nan fa!
Mu’azu: tun ran da Allahu yai duniya
Nan yay yi mutum mai ƙokari
Nan yay yi mutum mai samu
Kuma yay yi mutum busasshe
Sannan yay yi mutum mai haske
Kuma yay yi mutum mai dauni
Sannan yay yi mutum mai kyawo
Kuma yay yi mutum mummuna
Nan yay yi mutum ɗan sarki
Kuma ya aza bawan sarki
Sannan yay yi mutum mai iko
Kuma ya aza mai roƙo nai
Translated, sourced from
Yakawada’s archives as follows:
Mu’azu:
from the day that God created the world
Sa’idu:
that is right
Mu’azu:
from the day that God created the world
It was
then he created hardworking
It was
then he created a rich man
It was
then he created a poor man
It was
then he created a shining man
And he
created a perspiring man
And he
created a good-looking man
And he
created an ugly man
It was
then he created a prince
And he
created the king's servant
And he
created an aristocrat
And he made the one who will
beg of him
From the above lines, one
will understand the statements made by Mu’azu are truthful with facts drawn
from the Qur’an, Sunnah and other religious books.
iii.
Mu’azu has provided new information with
background knowledge in line 29, where he qualified the statements of the lead
and the vocalists in line 28 as follows:
Sa’idu: Gurbin giwa…
Karɓi: sai ɗanta
Zomo anka aza yab bar gidan
Mu’azu: shugaban Gwambe da Bauci da Ankara
Translated,
sourced from Yakawada’s archives as follows:
Sa’idu:
Elephants place
Vocalists:
benefit only its offspring
Mu’azu: the leader of Gwambe,
Bauchi and Ankara
From the above lines, one
will understand that Mu’azu had a background knowledge of these leaders
mentioned which may be related to the information obtained from the lead and
the vocalists on the character of an elephant with its children, personified to
the leaders.
iv.
From the interpretations of the three maxims
above using the song Waƙar
Mamman Sarkin Kudu, one
will understand that Mu’azu had been brief, orderly, avoided ambiguity, and
avoided obscurity in his utterances. By so doing Mu’azu, who is the subordinate
of Sa’idu has played a vital role in the conversation of the song.
6.
Conclusion
In the song Waƙar Mamman Sarkin Kudu, Sa’idu Faru who is the lead singer
has been in conversation with one of his subordinates Mu’azu. Mu’azu has also
not only been in conversation with Sa’idu but also with the rest of the
vocalists collectively. Hitherto, the conversational implicature deduced that
the dialogue between the lead and his vocalists has moved to a level of lead,
the vocalists and mu’azu, a multilogue. It is observed that Sa’idu and Mu’azu
have become the two leads with vocalists. It is then observed that the song,
thus, the song has moved from lead and vocalists to a duet. Conclusively,
Sa’idu Faru’s song Waƙar Mamman Sarkin Kudu is a Duet,
considering the importance and the status of Mu’azu in the song.
References
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J. (2006). Rhythm in Music: What is it? Who has it? And why? Music
Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 24(2),
125-1341
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(Eds.), The Handbook of Pragmatics. Malden: Blackwell Publishing
Ltd.
3. Grice,
H. P. (1975). Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan
(Eds.), Syntax and Semantics, 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic
Press.
4. Gusau,
S. M. (2003). Jagoran Nazarin Waƙar Baka. Kano: Benchmark Publishers
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5. Malmkjᴂr, K. (1991). The
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C.F. (2009). Introducing English
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8. Yakawada,
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Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna state.
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