Paper short abstract:

There exists a practice of film translation in Eastern Africa based on manipulation of film sound to insert oral narrative. This paper engages with DJ Afro’s work to describe and evaluate the impact of orality in this emergent genre of film narration as intermedial form of popular culture.

Paper long abstract:

There exists a unique practice of film translation based on the manipulation of sound in film such that the dialogue in the original is superseded by oral narrative performance and studies have been done on this to examine the aesthetic and technological processes and outcomes of this practice in Eastern Africa (Jiafang Lee 2022, James Ogone 2020, Matthias Krings (2015, 2007, Damaris Wanjiru 2018, Anne Overbergh 2014 and Kimani and Mugubi 2014). This paper extends the discourse by locating it within what one might call the adaptation of the technological elements of film to the frames and tropes of the oral tradition. In doing so, I work with the concepts of intermediality and orality as they manifest in he work of DJ Afro. On intermediality in film, I follow the basic questions of production, distribution, function, and reception (J, Arvidson et al, 2007). On orality, I reflect on relevant elements of oral performance in such studies, particularly on Karin Barber’s concept of the constitution of oral texts (2007) and Ruth Finnegan’s concept of ‘how to do things with words’ (1969). I consider the oral and technological extensions of film that occur in this process as an echo of what Keyan Tomaselli, Arnold Shepperson and Maureen Eke have termed as the interpretation and rearticulation of Western media in the specific African contexts. Most important, I explore the production of popular cultures that are facilitated in the interstices between the two distinct media of technology and oral performance