Dr. Paolo Flavio Zedda, Oral Poet and Professor of Ethnomusicology, delivered the 2008-2009 Albert Lord and Milman Parry Lecture at the University of Missouri on November 5th, 2008. The lecture, “Sardinian Oral Traditions,” was illustrated by recordings and a live performance.
Widely recognized as one of the leading oral poets in Sardinia, Dr. Zedda is also a professor of ethnomusicology at the Università di Cagliari and a dentist specializing in orthodontics. Among his recent publications are The Art of the Motet (2007) and The Song in Itself (2007). He has performed and delivered lectures in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Cuba, the Basque Country, the United States, and elsewhere. He spent two weeks at the University of Missouri, visiting classes and participating in extended interviews that will lead to a book and a web publication featuring his unique perspective on oral poetry—as both a performer and a scholar.
The Center for Studies in Oral Tradition has completed the migration of its journal Oral Tradition to the web. All 22 years of OT, from 1986 forward, are now available online, open-access, and free of charge as downloadable pdf files. This unique archive of research comprises nearly 10,000 pages and 500 articles on dozens of traditions worldwide from ancient times to the present, and is fully searchable on-site. Please help us spread the word about this facility by contacting colleagues, students, and librarians in your field.
Oral Tradition
Imagine selling 13,025 tickets for oral poetry. Imagine further an entire 6-7 hours of live performances broadcast on regional television as they happen, with excerpts, summaries, and expert commentary on national television. Imagine a one-day event – the final act in a multi-stage, four-year, Olympian drama of qualification and elimination – galvanizing ethnic, national identity to a degree unparalleled virtually anywhere in the world. Imagine the confluence of all of these phenomena and you have the Bertsolari Txapelketa, the national championship of bertsolaritza, the improvised contest poetry from Basque oral tradition, which took place in Barakaldo, Spain, on December 18, 2005.
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The home page of the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition website features news stories, articles, and announcements of events that are of interest to individuals involved in the comparative field of oral tradition studies. What appears on this page at any given moment is a selection of items that are either time-dependent or of continuing importance of one kind or another. After their currency has expired, we will archive older items in the archive section of the website, so that they can serve as reference material on a permanent basis.
