The uses of satire in selected Songs by Newton Kariuki

Abstract

This study is an analysis of satire as a literary device that has been used in oral literature. The. study proceeds with an assumption that the satirist singer has employed various techniques of satire effectively relating them to themes as well as to other elements of style. At the same time the study assumes that the satirical techniques enhance our appreciation and understanding of oral literature and specifically the songs of Newton Kariuki under this study. This study, being a stastics analysis, is guided by the basic tenets of the combined socio-stylistics approach which it employs in exploring the effectiveness of the satiric techniques at the disposal of oral artists in general and Newton Kariuki in particular. It is helpful in our understanding of how a particular song functions and in discussing what techniques of satire are used and why they are used. The combined theoretical approach therefore helps us in considering every piece of oral composition of this study on its merits, trying to evaluate its degree of literary validity by tracing through the literary characteristics which it manifests, the creating process which brought the composition into existence. In our study we acknowledge the biographical details of Newton Kariuki and appreciate their contribution to the artistic development as well as their significant impact on the satirical aesthetics and thematic structure of his songs. The study also is implicitly an expression of the significance of fieldwork in studies based on oral literature as the most appropriate way of collecting information. In this process the researcher forms part of the audience in the interesting and educative oral performances whose traditional contexts are getting fewer and fewer and being replaced by new ones in the socio-dynamics of our modern society.