Verbal Duela

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Verbal Duels
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Last Time

• We looked at examples of people disagreeing
  during conversations, and saw how they do it,
  including their body language. Then we discussed
  insults and saw that what counts as insult is
  contextual.
• Today
• We will look at verbal duels, a genre that is
  often, if not always, used for political
  purposes.
• We will see the Kazakhs Aytys, the Italian
  Contrasto and a few others.
• We will consider politics, resistance and veiling.

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High Art and Insult
Now shall I split off words
Little, sharp words Like the wooden splinters
Which I hack off with my ax. A
song from ancient times A breath of the ancestors
A song of longing for my wife. An impudent,
black skinned oaf has stolen her
Has tried to belittle her. A miserable wretch
who loves human flesh A cannibal from famine
days.
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What is a verbal duel?

• A genre of argumentative language that entails
  exchanges between two persons, parties or
  characters who challenge each other to a
  performative display of verbal skillfulness, in
  front of an audience.
• Verbal duels are present in different forms
  across the world.

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The Aytys

• Sung poetry in verses, ideally improvised, with
  music (dombyra).
• Performances in theaters, in TV, for several
  days.
• Who pays for them? Sponsorship
• Resistance and collusion
• Critiques to the government
• Nationalism what is a nation?
• An imagined community.
• To create nations, traditions must be invented.

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• The relevance of gendered categories, political
  parties, occupational statuses, and the
  reputations of Tuscan medieval towns are commonly
  debated through the elaborately structured verbal
  duels that Tuscan Italians know as Contrasti.
  Carrying on a tradition based in the middle ages,
  such duels provide venues in which the form and
  substance of popular debate is set to verse. The
  performers can veil effective political critique
  and negotiate definitions of gender and ethnic
  identities.

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Contrasto

• The Contrasto is a type of improvised sung
  poetical verbal duel, performed in the context of
  festivals and events, by pairs of artists, mostly
  males, called Poeti Bernescanti or simply poeti,
  poets.

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Topics

• The tema (topic) may be chosen by the audience or
  by the poets.
• It always includes an opposition between two
  elements/ concepts, etc.
• Husband Vs. Wife
• Priest, Physician and Undertaker
• Science Vs. Nature
• Any two political figures
• E.g. Berlusconi Vs. Prodi
• Any two cities.
• E.g. Prato Vs. Pistoia
• The poets Liliana Tamberi and Altamante Logli ?

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Context

• Context local events.
• Festivals of Unity
• Festivals of Liberation
• Festivals of the parishes, Sagre, etc.
• Poets Meeting in Ribolla
• Other occasions (TV, radio, universities,
  marriages, hunting dinners)

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Audience
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Structure

• The poets alternate singing 1 octet (stanza of 8
  verses) each.
• The verses are hendecasyllables.
• 6 alternating rhymes 2 coupled rhymes
• ABABABCC
• In the last octets the poets alternate singing
  one verse each.

• 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 /
  11
• 1-A cé/ le/ bel/lez/ze/ ve/di/ le/ piú/ ra/re
• there are the beauties, you see, the most rare
• 2-B o quella l é la tera degli amori
• O, that is the land of loves
• 3-A doe si coltivano cose-e molto rare
• where the rarest things are cultivated
• 4-B o specialmente delle rose e fiori
• and especially roses and flowers
• 5-A o li non avrai delusioni amare
• O there you will not have bitter delusions
• 6-B o dove che si incontrano gli amori
• where loves are encountered
• 7-C invece te che abiti a Scandicci
• instead you, living in Scandicci
• 8-C e tu ti trovi sempre ne pasticci
• you always find yourself in a mess

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The octets are chained

• Octet 1 (Realdo Tonti)
• C 8 Gli stessi ladroni pigliavano kattrini
• The same big thieves were taking the money.
• Octet 2 (Gabriele Ara)
• C 9 E ora fa i patti con quegli assassini
• And now you make accords with those assassins.
• ?Left Gabriele Ara

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Cooperating through Insults

• Verbal duels are highly cooperative achievements.
• Successful performances and renown for the
  artists come from being able to cooperate in
  constructing the most effective attacks.
• Politeness in a verbal duel is highly unwelcome.
• Insults are used when the poets are in character
  they do not upset the other poet.

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Art as Action Creating Agent Subject Positions

• Contrasto between two Italian politicians,
  DAlema and Bertinotti, sung in Viaccia (1998),
  Festival of Liberation, by Realdo Tonti and
  Gabriele Ara.
• The poets uphold and attack political
  relationships and political views, dialectically
  addressing the meaning of the political choices
  of the Italian parties of the left.
• Octet 16 Bertinotti accuses the PDS of betrayal
  of the communist ideals.
• Octet 17 DAlema argues that the changes in
  politics of the PDS were necessary and there was
  no betrayal.
• Octet 18 Bertinotti concludes that people do not
  care anymore (for politics) and the government is
  degraded.
• The poet Realdo Tonti ?

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Octet 16 - Ara/Bertinotti

• C 9 E ora fa i patti con quegli assassini
• and now you make accords with those assassins
• D 10 o meglio é quello che tu senti
• or better, this is what you feel
• C 11 ti fai i patti e trovi i confini
• you make accords and set the boundaries
• D 12 insieme a loro compagno o disc- camerati o
  discendenti
• together with them comrade- camerati or their
  descendants
• C 13 dissi compagni e sbagliai i rini
• I said comrade and I erred the rhymes
• D 14 volevo dire porci e malfidenti
• I wanted to say pigs and untrustworthy
• E 15 che se tratti con Prodi o Berlusconi
• that if you negotiate with Prodi and Berlusconi
• E 16 di certo nun le trovi tue ragioni
• for sure, you are not going to find your reasons
• AUDIENCE ((Listens attentively))

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Octet 17 - DAlema (Tonti)

• E 17 Cerco di non fa troppe confusioni
• I try not to bring too much confusion
• F 18 o di cercarla la diretta via
• and to find the direct path
• E 19 come vedi ancor lotto-o contro i padroni
• as you can see I still fight against the masters
• F 20 voglio dir per la democrazia
• I mean to say for democracy
• E 21 io nun so dalla parte dei ladroni
• I am not on the side of the big thieves
• F 22 lho mantenuta quellidea mia
• I kept that idea of mine
• G 23 se dellidee e che ce nho la scorta
• if of ideas, indeed, I have a surplus
• G 24 al mondo gliela vo dare una svorta
• I am going to make to the world spin
• AUDIENCE ((listens attentively))

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Octet 18 - Bertinotti (Ara)

• G 25 Ma sa alla gente cosa gliene importa
• But you know, people do not care
• H 26 tu sai gli é come dare lacqua ai somari
• you know, it is like giving water to donkeys
• G 27 i mass media ti danno questa vorta
• this time the mass media give you
• H 28 lopportunitá desser quello che appari
• the opportunity to be what you appear
• G 29 ad un poeta poco gliene importa
• to a poet this matters little
• H 30 te lo dicevo ora e un é guari
• I was telling you now, it is not (a trouble)
• I 31 che la sorte adesso é sempre quella
• but the destiny is always the same
• I 32 al governo ci hai messo la mortadella
• you put a mortadella in the government
• 33 Tonti
  ((laughing))
• 34 AUDIENCE ((general laughing))

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Veiling

• As Irvine notes (1992) there is a trade-off
  among speech forms, participant roles, and
  discourse frames, such that obliqueness in one or
  two of these permits directness in another
  (1992106).
• Using the structure of the genre
• Claiming tradition
• Renouncing authority
• Using indirect language or an antilanguage
• Sharing responsibility
• Using hyperbolic insults
• Claiming teasing, joking, non-serious keys

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• Altamante We were at San Vincenzo, at Campole,
  when the police made us stop singing because we
  were singing De Gasperi versus Togliatti. An
  officer asked, Why are you saying bad things
  about De Gasperi? And I told him, Because he
  says bad things about me! right? We are doing
  the Contrasto in poetry. Holy Virgin! Of course!
  This happened immediately after the war.
• Vale Were the police always there?
• Altamante Always. We went through some bad
  moments, you see. So, even in poetry, we had to
  take it into account, as I was telling you. Once,
  near here, in Badia, we were singing The
  Undertaker, the Priest, the Physician, and the
  Pharmacist. We were four poets. The Undertaker
  had been saying I am going to excavate deep
  holes to bury these loafers. He was referring to
  the Priest. Suddenly the marshal appears, and he
  calls me. Come here! He said, and he asks me,
  Why are you saying bad things about him, and why
  do you do things this way? I hear you have
  mentioned that priests are loafers and you said
  I work more. Why are you doing these things? I
  say But these are Contrasti in poetry! We are
  not doing it to really fight, you know? He says
  But cant you put someone else in that place?
  This is what he told me. And someone was about to
  tell him Marshal, would you like us to put you
  in the place of the priest?
• We laugh.
• Altamante But I would have ended up in jail! We
  could not say that!

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Antilanguages

• Why do you talk so difficult, in the Contrasti?
  Realdo answered The poetry a braccio you know-
  you understood a bit of the way it is. It was
  born in the threshing-floor of the peasants, you
  know. Because they could not really express
  themselves freely, then they would always talk
  implicitly. Maybe us Tuscans, this way of
  throwing things out through allusion in our
  language, we took it from those traditions
  indeed. Because us Tuscans, we do not have a
  straight talk.
• Semantic inversion/flippin the script was an act
  of linguistic empowerment as Africans in America
  took an alien tongue and made it theirs
  simultaneously, they created a communication
  system that became linguistically unintelligible
  to the oppressor, even though it was his
  language (Smitherman, 199717)

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Insult and Hyperbole in Dozens
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Other Genres

• The Gayo Didong.
• Brazilian Desafio.
• Busin in Guyana.
• Payada in Argentina.

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Closing

• The structure of verbal duels -- their
  organization that requires two opposite voices to
  be heard, and both in turn to be attacked --
  allows them to always present two sides of
  reality, thus making them both seem unstable and
  subjective.
• In speech play, the poets do not move toward a
  synthesis, but call the attention of the audience
  to perennial contradictions.

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Next Time

• Verbal fights
• In the context of the Tzotzil law system.
• We will look at 3 non-Western example of conflict
  mediation/resolution, two of them including a
  court system, the third using verbal duels.