imbongi

Let us consider the contemporary oral poetry of the Xhosa Bantu[…], and its highest form, the praise-poetry of male tradents, who were attached until recently to tribal chiefs. The tradents are imbongi ‘praise poets’ and the genre of their work is the izibongo ‘praise poem.’ “The lines of the imbongi’s oral izibongo do not display either syllabic or quantitative meter … though there is some reason to believe that one may be able to determine certain recurrent intonational patterns that function as meter” ([Jeff] Opland 1975: 194).