"The days when literature was limited to highbrow novels on a bookshelf are definitely over. Perhaps it was never really like that in the first place. We have had oral storytelling and poetry ever since antiquity," says Louisa Olufsen Layne, a literary scholar at the University of Oslo.
For a long time, she believes, a fairly narrow understanding of literature has prevailed in academic circles.
"However, we are now seeing more and more researchers, both in literary studies and cultural studies, taking an interest in literature and poetry in a broader sense: in oral storytelling traditions, popular culture and music. Suddenly, we are including a much larger audience of readers and listeners, including teenagers making music and writing lyrics in their bedrooms."
Much poetry has gone under the radar
Layne believes that a narrow understanding of literature has meant that much literary work has gone unnoticed in research. This is something she and her colleagues are seeking to address through the project Words, Sound and Power in the African Diaspora. The African diaspora refers to people of African heritage living outside Africa.
The researchers examine lyrical texts from the African diaspora in Britain, the United States and the Caribbean. These include works in musical genres such as jazz poetry, dub poetry, punk, soul, funk, spirituals, folk, blues and hip hop.
They investigate how songwriters and writers from different decades have drawn inspiration from one another, and how they have helped to shape our shared cultural history.
"Large parts of the West, including Norway, have a multicultural cultural history. However, the African diaspora has often been written out of official histories because of racism, the undervaluing of Black intellectual ability, and other structural factors," Layne says.
Blues og gospel formet Bob Dylan
However, as more and more people now agree that music, song lyrics and popular culture can have literary merit and constitute poetry on a par with the classics, writers in the African diaspora deserve a good deal of the credit, she points out.
Bob Dylan, who in 2016 became the first musician and songwriter to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, is, for example, deeply inspired by African American music.
In an interview with the American magazine AARP, Dylan describes how blues and gospel shaped him from a young age, and how the gospel group The Staple Singers "brought him down to earth and lifted him up at the same time".
"Dylan grew up among a generation of rock artists who drew much of their inspiration from various countercultures. Black culture was important in this respect. Over the years, a great many other artists have also been inspired by it, including Karpe here in Norway," Layne says.
Challenging the boundary between music and literature
One of the writers from the African diaspora in whom Layne has specialised is the Jamaican-born dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson.
Dub poetry is reggae-inspired and exists at the intersection of music and poetry.
"I was fascinated by the fact that he was inspired by quite a number of other Black writers who, in turn, drew inspiration from music," Layne says.
Through Kwesi Johnson, she was led to Langston Hughes. He is known for inventing jazz poetry, which is inspired by the rhythms of jazz and blues. Hughes was one of the leading figures of the African American cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance in the United States between 1920 and 1940.
"During the Harlem Renaissance, artists, writers and musicians played with the relationship between poetry and music, thereby challenging the boundary between the two art forms. This is part of a long tradition that we also see in Norway today, for example among rappers such as Musti and Arif," Layne says.
The audience of listeners and readers becomes enormous
Layne points out that many people today - particularly young people - develop an interest in text and literature through popular culture. They may not buy books, but they listen to genres such as rap, jazz, soul and blues, in which the lyrics are poetry. And many people care about the quality of those lyrics.
"When we ask who reads, we must not only ask who reads novels, but who is interested in the lyrical. Who is interested in metaphors and rhyme? When we ask these questions, we discover a sizeable audience of listeners and readers. This creates opportunities to reach more people."
Very many people are still interested in literature; they simply explore it through a wider range of media, and through different media than before, she believes.
If you have a voice, you have power
"Quite a few of us know a teenager who has sat down at home to write lyrics or make music on their computer. In doing so, they develop a literary sensibility. The elitist idea that literature is only something found on a bookshelf does not really hold up. There is so much else, and in truth, it has always been that way," says the literary scholar.
According to Layne, the democratic element is obvious: writing poetry requires neither much time nor many materials.
"You can sit in a small flat with a small pencil and write a small poem. Underprivileged and oppressed groups with access to few resources have always had access to their own voices. The Black radical tradition has emphasised that this is a tool we all possess. It offers both poetic and political power."
About the project
"Words, Sound and Power in the African Diaspora" is an interdisciplinary research project funded by the Research Council of Norway's FRIPRO scheme for early-career researchers.
