Paper short abstract:

“Imagine selling 13,025 tickets for oral poetry” (Foley 2007: 3) every four years – or maybe 5000 annually? These numbers are for contest poetry finals in the Basque country and the international Spanish-language freestyle rap battle. How is this improvised art related to traditional oral poetry?

Paper long abstract:

In his presentation of the Oral-Formulaic Theory, Albert Lord (1960) rejected the notion of ‘improvisation’ as not suitable to explain the method of narrative oral composition. The epic singers also claimed that they tell the story exactly as they have heard it. Today’s oral poets chiefly practice oral composition in forms to which they explicitly refer as improvisation. Theorizers of these increasingly popular registers of improvised oral poetry have respectively found the Formula Theory disappointing - “we do not use formulas” (Díaz-Pimienta 2004).

In traditional cultures of oral poetry, shared textual resources – formulas, motifs, episodes, themes, multiforms – function as compositional means, aesthetic objects and intertextual links. Rather than explicitly using such means, improvised oral poetry operates with imagery and expression close to common language, yet similarly subordinate to conventions of the poetic language employed. Language itself, however, is formulaic, and improvisation is not reluctant towards textually building interperformative links, even if the improviser’s aesthetic target is to say something situationally unique, quick-witted, and creative. Thus, when we speak of formulaic oral composition and improvisation, are we speaking of two different things or simply two different aesthetic orientations, both based on individuals’ capacity to cultivate cognitive, linguistic and sociolinguistic skills, albeit if emphasized differently by the performers and their audiences in each case? Can we look at oral composition by situating traditional and new forms within the same system of genres? This paper will present a preliminary layout of a research project with this target.