Today, it seems like there is very little "oral tradition" left, or at least, not in the way that we imagine it. However, one thing that has seemed to stick (or perhaps, reemerge?) is poetry. Of course, there are plenty of poetry books, and we imagine the poet as a slightly melancholic introvert writing poems under a tree, however, poetry has been and still is a social phenomenon.
The edited volume Sehrengiz, Urban Rituals and Deviant Sufi Mysticism describes numerous poetic Poetry gatherings. The learned of the Ottoman empire would host exquisite garden parties, where wine bearers would float between fountains and pavilions, serving wine to a group of reclining jurists singing "Hurrah! And praise a thousand times this party that revivifies?" (from a poem of Hayreti, translated by Walter Andrews). Musicians would play as participants laughed and argued while taking turns reciting poetry, old and new.
Recently, I attended the Mosquers Film Festival in Edmonton, where Amir Sulaiman recited poetry as a 'half-time show.' Though this was not such an intimate setting as the rose-garden parties of Ottoman times, he made an effort to engage with the audience. Instead of just reciting poetry, he said, he would answer questions. Of course, the first question asked he then declined to answer (this is still a performance, not a dialogue), but many of the questions he did answer, slipping into poetry as if that was the true answer to all the questions. One person asked whether he was inspired by "gangster rap." Of course, there is some correlation. In reality it should make no difference whether a poem is spoken or written or sung, but these days we usually think of the written type.
Urdu poetry, for example, is most commonly sung. A poetry performance makes me think of one of the closing scenes of Pyaasa, the beautiful 1957 Hindi film. The virtuous Guru Dutt stands in a huge theatre, walking in like a ghost singing a poem they did not know was his. He laments about the illusions of the "duniya," the world, that causes people to be blinded by profit. But he is not the best singer in this film. One of his earlier poems was sold "as toilet paper," unappreciated and unloved, but somehow he finds it again being sung from a prostitute's lips. Waheeda Rehman, the virtuous charlatan who lives by Guru Dutt's poems, caring for humanity rather than the shallow trappings of our world.
I, for one, am not a poet, and honestly I rarely read poetry and I've never been to a spoken word event. But somehow, poetry seems to enter my life: it's there even if you don't know it. Every song I listen to, that is a poem, every silly commercial jingle, that is a poem too, even children playing and singing nursery rhymes, those are poems. Because poetry is not just written, but it is lived.
Sources:
Sehrengiz, Urban Rituals and Deviant Sufi Mysticism B. Caliz-Kural
Pyaasa with Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rahman
Amir Sulaiman at Mosquers Film Festival
