---
title: "Contemporary Amharic Oral Poetry from Gojjam: Classification"
description: "The paper tackles a gap in Ethiopian studies. 6 references. Among them: 4."
authors: ["Getie Gelaye"]
year: 2013
venue: "Aethiopica 2"
source: "https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/aethiopica/article/view/537"
doi: "10.15460/aethiopica.2.1.537"
licence: "CC BY-SA (journal licence per DOAJ; Aethiopica)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/gelaye-2013-contemporary-amharic-oral-poetry-gojjam/"
---
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# Contemporary Amharic Oral Poetry from Gojjam: Classification and a sample Analysis

**Authors:** [Getie Gelaye](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/getie-gelaye/) · **Year:** 2013 · **Venue:** [Aethiopica 2](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/aethiopica/) ([Aethiopica 2013](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/aethiopica/2013/)) · **Publisher:** [Hamburg University Press](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/hamburg-university-press/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-SA (journal licence per DOAJ; Aethiopica)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.2.1.537) · [PDF](https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/aethiopica/article/download/537/541) · [DOI 10.15460/aethiopica.2.1.537](https://doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.2.1.537) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W1527499920)

**Citations:** 4 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14)

## Summary
The paper tackles a gap in Ethiopian studies. Amharic oral poetry from rural regions has rarely been collected or classified systematically. Earlier work was scattered, and the field was overshadowed by the church tradition of Ge'ez qɨne. The author ran two rounds of fieldwork in 1997–1998, about eight months in total, in two peasant communities of East Gojjam: Dej Mariam and Gedeb Giorgis. He recorded performances at weddings, work parties, holidays and funerals, interviewed selected singers and poets, and kept field diaries. He then sorted the material into genres and themes. The sorting combined the villagers' own categories, gɨtʼɨm (poetry) and zäfän (song), with his own observations and an interdisciplinary view covering social, cultural, historical and political context. Selected work songs, children's songs, war chants, boasting recitals and laments are analysed. The analysis shows that peasants use verse as a channel for news and opinion, and to support or protest state policy. A central example is the 1996/97 land redistribution after the 1991 change of government. The author argues that policymakers should take this poetic feedback seriously.

## Key points
- The fieldwork ran from 6 March to 30 June 1997 and from 29 November 1997 to 30 March 1998. It drew on 32 key informants who recited or sang more than 2,000 poems.
- The two research sites have similar populations: Dej Mariam has 5,248 people in a moderate wäyna däga zone, and Gedeb Giorgis has 5,164 in a lowland qolla zone near the Blue Nile gorge.
- The genres identified include:
  - historical, hunting, love, court, praise, begging, conversational and war poetry;
  - heroic, New Year's, religious, zar (healing) and cattle songs;
  - lullabies.
- Court, hunting and smallpox poetry are fading or close to extinction.
- The 1996/97 regional land readjustment sorted farmers into three labels: qɨrrit fi-yudal (remnant feudals), birokrat (bureaucrats) and dɨha arso adär (poor farmers). It sparked conflict and produced many laments about confiscated rɨst and gult land.
- The PDF header gives the source as Aethiopica 2 (1999), pp. 124–143, not 2013.

## Interesting ideas
- Classify texts first by the categories the speakers themselves use, then add the analyst's own layer, so the scheme stays faithful to how the community actually thinks about genre.
- Genres overlap during improvisation, so one piece can belong to several classes at once rather than fitting a single bin.
- In the laments, "they" means local land officials, yet nothing in the poem itself names them; the referent comes from shared situational knowledge.
- A peasant mourns himself as if already dead and buried to express the loss of his ancestral land, which is figurative self-depiction carrying a literal grievance.
- Each poem is read against four context layers (social, cultural, historical, political), so one text yields several complementary interpretations.

## For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

- **I1** (world): Genre and register labels in the ontology could store both a folk term and an analytic term, so explanations can cite the speaker's own category.
- **I2** (frames): Speech-act and genre tagging could allow several weighted labels per utterance, for example lament plus protest, instead of forcing one choice.
- **I3** (frames): Coreference could add an "implicit authority" antecedent drawn from the world model, letting an unbound plural pronoun resolve to an offstage group with a stated reason.
- **I4** (frames): The irony and implicature module could detect counterfactual self-death framing and map it to a real-world loss event, rather than recording a literal death.
- **I5** (world): Entities and events could carry context-layer tags, letting an answer explain which background layer, such as land-tenure history, supports an inference.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

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## Cite

Cite as: Getie Gelaye. 2013. Contemporary Amharic Oral Poetry from Gojjam: Classification and a sample Analysis. Aethiopica 2.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{gelaye2013contemporary,
  title = {{Contemporary Amharic Oral Poetry from Gojjam: Classification and a sample Analysis}},
  author = {Getie Gelaye},
  booktitle = {Aethiopica 2},
  year = {2013},
  doi = {10.15460/aethiopica.2.1.537},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.15460/aethiopica.2.1.537}
}
```

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## References

6 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. A BDUSSAMAD H. A HMAD , Peasant Conditions in Gojjam during the Great Famine 1888߃1892 = Journal of Ethiopian Studies XX, 1 (1987) 1߃18. ________, Emperor Yohanis߈ Campaign in Gojjam, August 1888 to February 1889 = Northeast African Studies 13, 1 (1991) 1߃7. A GU , O GONNA , Songs and War: The Mixed Messages of Biafran War Songs = African Languages and Cultures 4, 1 (1991) 5߃19. ԅкэԚг ѐԺѧ֖ ӔҧԠէԝӼ ѷӆ֖ [Ethiopian Qene] ( Ӓѧъѝ 1959 E.C.). A NDRZEJEWSKI , B.W. and I. M. L EWIS , An Introduction to Somali Poetry, Oxford University Press (Nairobi 1964). C OHEN , M ARCEL , Couplets Amhariques du Choa = Journal Asiatique (Paris 1924) 1߃100. D ESSALEGN R AHMATO , Agrarian Reform in Ethiopia, Scandinavian Institute of African Studies (Uppsala 1984). ________, The Unquiet Countryside: The Collapse of Socialism and Agitation, 1990 and 1991 = Ethiopia in Change: Peasantry, Nationalism and Democracy, A BEBE Z EGEYE and S IEGFRIED P AUSEWANG , eds., British Academic Press (London and New York 1994) 242߃278. E GE , S VEIN , The Promised Land: The Amhara Land Redistribution of 1997, Centre for Environment and Development, Working Papers on Ethiopian Development, 12 (Trondheim 1997). [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=A+BDUSSAMAD+H%2E+A+HMAD+%2C+Peasant+Conditions+in+Gojjam+during+the+Great+Famine+1888%DF%831892+%3D+Journal+of+Ethiopian+Studies+XX%2C+1+%281987%29+1%DF%8318%2E+%5F%5F%5F%5F%5F%5F%5F%5F%2C+Emperor+Yohanis%DF%88+Campaign+in+Gojjam%2C+August+1888+to+F)
2. Getie Gelaye F EKADE A ZEZE , Ethiopian Oral Literature: A Preliminary Review and Bibliography. Unpublished paper presented to the Eighth International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, 26߃30 November (Addis Ababa 1984). ________, Some Aspects of Peasant Response to Drought and Famine in Ethiopian Oral Poetry: The Case of Northern Shoa = New Trends in Ethiopian Studies: Papers of the 12 th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, H AROLD M ARCUS , ed., The Red Sea Press, Inc., I ( Michigan 1994) 335߃367. ________, Unheard Voices: Drought, Famine and God in Ethiopian Oral Poetry, Addis Ababa University Press and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Addis Ababa and Trondheim 1998). F ERENC , A LEXANDER , Writing and Literature in Classical Ethiopic Ge߈ez = Literatures in African Languages: Theoretical Issues and Sample Surveys, A NDRZEJEWSKI et. al., eds., Cambridge University Press (Cambridge 1985) 255߃300. F INNEGAN , R UTH , Oral Literature in Africa, Oxford University Press (Nairobi 1970). ________, Oral Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context, Indiana University Press (Bloomington and Indianapolis 1992a). ________, Oral Traditions and the Verbal Arts: A Guide for Research Practices, Routledge (London 1992b). F URNISS , G RAHAM , Poetry, Prose and Popular Culture in Hausa, Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh 1996). [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Getie+Gelaye+F+EKADE+A+ZEZE+%2C+Ethiopian+Oral+Literature%3A+A+Preliminary+Review+and+Bibliography%2E+Unpublished+paper+presented+to+the+Eighth+International+Conference+of+Ethiopian+Studies%2C+26%DF%8330+November+)
3. F URNISS , G RAHAM and L IZ G UNNER , eds., Power, Marginality and African Oral Literature, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge 1995). G ETATCHEW H AILE , Qene Poems in Older Amharic = Journal of Semitic Studies (1991) 521߃530. G ETIE G ELAYE , The Social Life of Yetnora Agricultural Producers߈ Cooperative and Its Reflections in Amharic Oral Poetry, Unpublished M.A. Thesis in Social Anthropology, Addis Ababa University, School of Graduate Studies (1994). ________, Semantic Analysis of Amharic Kinship Terms in Gojjam: An Anthropological Approach = Africa, Rivista trimestrale di studi e documenta-zione dell߈Istituto italiano per l߈Africa e l߈Oriente 53, 1 (1998a) 71߃92. ________, Doing Fieldwork in a Native߈s Community: Ethiopian Peasants and their Reflections on Contemporary Local Politics in Amharic Oral Poetry, Unpublished paper presented at the 5 th Biennial European Association of Social Anthropologists Conference, Frankfurt am Main, 4߃7 September (1998b). G UIDI , I GNAZIO , La Raccolta di Qene, Tipografia della R. Accademia dei Lincei (Roma 1908). [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=F+URNISS+%2C+G+RAHAM+and+L+IZ+G+UNNER+%2C+eds%2E%2C+Power%2C+Marginality+and+African+Oral+Literature%2C+Cambridge+University+Press+%28Cambridge+1995%29%2E+G+ETATCHEW+H+AILE+%2C+Qene+Poems+in+Older+Amharic+%3D+Journal+of+Se)
4. Contemporary Amharic Oral Poetry from Gojjam H OBEN , A LLAN , Land Tenure among the Amhara of Ethiopia: The Dynamics of Cognatic Descent, University of Chicago Press (Chicago 1973). K LINGENHEBEN , A UGUST , Zur amharischen Poesie = Rassegna di Studi Etiopici 15 (1959) 5߃20. L ESLAU , W OLF , Ethiopian Argots, Janua Linguarum, Series Practica 17, Mouton (The Hague 1964). L EVINE , D ONALD , Wax and Gold: Tradition and Innovation in Ethiopian Culture, The University of Chicago Press (Chicago 1965). L ITTMANN , E NNO , Altamharische Kaiserlieder (Stra¾burg 1914). O KPEWHO , I SIDORE , African Oral Literature: Backgrounds, Character and Continuity, Indiana University Press (Bloomington and Indianapolis 1992). O LATUNJI , O LATUNDE , Issues in the Study of Oral Poetry in Africa = Journal of African Studies 6, 2 (1979) 112߃119. P AUSEWANG , S IEGFRIED , Peasants, Land and Society: A Social History of Land Reform in Ethiopia, Weltforum (Munich 1983). S HIBESHI L EMMA , A Thematic Approach to Famine-Inspired Amharic Oral Poetry, Unpublished M.A. Thesis in Literature, Addis Ababa University, School of Graduate Studies (1986). S OW , A BDUL A ZIZ , Fulani Poetic Genres = Research in African Literatures 24, 2 (1993) 61߃78. T EFERI A BATE , Land Redistribution and the Macro Dynamics of Land Access and Use in Amhara: The Case of Two Communities in South Wollo = Ethiopia in Broader Perspective: Papers of the 13 th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies, K ATSUYSHI F UKUI et. al., eds., Shokado Book Sellers II (Kyoto 1997) 768߃797. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Contemporary+Amharic+Oral+Poetry+from+Gojjam+H+OBEN+%2C+A+LLAN+%2C+Land+Tenure+among+the+Amhara+of+Ethiopia%3A+The+Dynamics+of+Cognatic+Descent%2C+University+of+Chicago+Press+%28Chicago+1973%29%2E+K+LINGENHEBEN+%2C+A)
5. ҢѢэ вҗҢ ьӝӖп Կկӿ֓ ӚѕҦ җџеӇ ҢѢэ֖ ԚԂэџӍ ъԏԺҒ ѵнҧ֖ [Amharic Dictionary] ӒџҤѧҤӟ эҢьԝ Җҧ֖ ( ӒԤѧ ӒҒҕ 1959 E.C.). [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%D2%A2%D1%A2%D1%8D+%D0%B2%D2%97%D2%A2+%D1%8C%D3%9D%D3%96%D0%BF+%D4%BF%D5%AF%D3%BF%D6%93+%D3%9A%D1%95%D2%A6+%D2%97%D1%9F%D0%B5%D3%87+%D2%A2%D1%A2%D1%8D%D6%96+%D4%9A%D4%82%D1%8D%D1%9F%D3%8D+%D1%8A%D4%8F%D4%BA%D2%92+%D1%B5%D0%BD%D2%A7%D6%96+%5BAmharic+Dictionary%5D+%D3%92%D1%9F%D2%A4%D1%A7%D2%A4%D3%9F+%D1%8D%D2%A2%D1%8C%D4%9D+%D2%96%D2%A7%D6%96+%28+%D3%92%D4%A4%D1%A7+%D3%92%D2%92%D2%95+1959+E%2EC%2E%29%2E)
6. Y IGREMEW A DAL , Rural Land Holding Readjustment in West Gojjam, Amhara Region, A Paper presented to the Workshop on Land Tenure Project, Access to Land and Resource management in Ethiopia, Institute of Development Research, Addis Ababa University, 28߃29 November (1997). Z IKRE H IG , A Proclamation to Provide the Establishment of The Council of the Amhara National Region, Proclamation No. 2/1995, Council of the Amhara National Regional State (Bahir Dar 1995). ________, A Proclamation to Provide the Reallotment of the Possession of Rural Land in the Amhara National Region, Proclamation No. 16/1996, Council of the Amhara National Regional State (Bahir Dar 1996). [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Y+IGREMEW+A+DAL+%2C+Rural+Land+Holding+Readjustment+in+West+Gojjam%2C+Amhara+Region%2C+A+Paper+presented+to+the+Workshop+on+Land+Tenure+Project%2C+Access+to+Land+and+Resource+management+in+Ethiopia%2C+Institute)

*Updated 30 October 2026*