Folksong based appraisal of bio-eco-cultural heritage of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench): A new approach in ethnobiology
sorghum is one of the main staple crops for the world's poorest and most food insecure people. As Ethiopia is the centre of origin and diversity for sorghum, the crop has been cultivated for many thousand years and hence the heritage of the crop is expected to be rich.
Folksong based appraisal of bioecocultural heritage has not been done before.
Methods: In order to assess the bioecocultural heritage of sorghum by folk songs various research methods were employed. These included focus group discussions with 360 farmers, direct on farm participatory monitoring and observation with 120 farmers, and key informant interviews with 60 farmers and development agents.
Relevant secondary data was also collected from the museum curators and historians.
Results: It has been found out that the crop is intimately associated with the life of the farmers. The association of sorghum with the farmers from seed selection to utilization is presented using folk songs.
Folksong includes both tune and textual (ballad stories or poems) types. Folksongs described that farmers maintain a number of varieties on farm for many biological, socio-economic, ecological, ethnological and cultural reasons.
Farmers describe sorghum as follows: Leaf number is less than twenty; Panicle holds thousand seeds; a clever farmer holds of it. Besides, they described the various farmers'varieties ethnobotanically by songs.
The relative importance of sorghum vis-a-vis others crops is similarly explained in folksong terms.
Conclusions: The qualitative description of farmers'characterisation of crop system based on folksongs is a new system of appraising farmers'bioecocultural heritages. Hence, researchers in addition to formal and quantitative descriptions, have to use the folksong system for enhanced characterisation and utilization of bioecocultural heritages.
In general, the vital characteristics of the folksongs used in describing the bioecocultural heritages are their oral traditions, varied function, communal or individual recreation and message transmissions.
Author: Firew Mekbib
Credits/Source: Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2009, 5:19
Published on: 2009-07-03
Copyright by the authors listed above - made available via BioMedCentral (Open Access). Please
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