The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music

and Culture
Proverbs and Music

Contributors: Peter E. Unseth

Edited by: Janet Sturman
Book Title: The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture
Chapter Title: "Proverbs and Music"
Pub. Date: 2019
Access Date: May 2, 2019
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks,
Print ISBN: 9781483317755
Online ISBN: 9781483317731
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483317731.n578
Print pages: 1748-1749
© 2019 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online
version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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© 2019 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

Proverbs, like songs, reflect many aspects of a culture, such as loyalty, family, and reconciliation. Therefore,
one expects to find links between proverbs and musical traditions. These links involve the incorporation of
proverbs in lyrics, proverbs about music and instruments, and the derivation of proverbs from lyrics.

The studies cited here have limited global scope since parts of the world have no recorded traditional
proverbs, and as of 2018, published studies of proverbs have been more plentiful regarding European and
African languages. The scarcity of proverb studies involving music in Asia provides opportunity for future re-
search.

Professor of Folklore Wolfgang Mieder defines a proverb as “a short, generally known sentence of the folk
which contains wisdom, truth, morals, and traditional views in a metaphorical, fixed, and memorizable form
and which is handed down from generation to generation.” Proverbs often contain verbal art such as rhyme,
meter, assonance, and alliteration. This entry discusses the interplay between proverbs and music composi-
tion and performance throughout different cultural contexts.

Proverbs and Lyrics

Songs in many languages include proverbs. Because proverbs are already artistically composed, many easily
lend themselves to being incorporated into song lyrics. In European languages, proverbs have been used in
genres as varied as opera, country, folk songs, rock ’n’ roll, hip-hop, and ballads. In other languages, also,
they have been used in a wide variety of genres, such as royal appellation songs, dirges, praise songs, insult
songs, work songs, and war songs. Among the Acoli people of Uganda, singer-composers often incorporate
proverbs into their song, seen in Okot p’Bitek’s 1966 novel Song of Lawino, which contains many song lyrics.
Acoli proverbs are frequently incorporated into these lyric passages.

Some genres specifically involve proverbs, such as the Swahili short proverb songs. Some songs were com-
posed entirely of known proverbs, and others are excerpts from song lyrics that have become proverbial. The
Nigerian performer Ode Igbang of the Igede language community is credited with creating a new musical
genre, Etuh, which means “proverbs.” Among the Shona of Zimbabwe, there is a category of song texts drawn
from proverbs.

Among the Anlo Ewe of Ghana, there used to be a type of judged performance known as haló, a compound
of ha (song) and ló (proverb). Haló events included a variety of media and arts, including dance, insult songs,
talking drums, mime, costumes, and poetry. The songs included quotations of proverbs, along with other artis-
tic and colorful language. The proverbs could be cited in their usual forms or paraphrased, according to the
needs and skill of the singer. Typical Ewe singing is known as hadzidzi, but a special half-spoken type, known
as hamelo (in-song-proverb), was also used during haló.

As with spoken uses of proverbs, lyrics will often include only part of a proverb. For example, a hip-hop num-
ber by the Nigerian artist 9ice cites the first 13 syllables of a Yoruba proverb but omits the next 22.

Examples of songs containing common English proverbs (or parts of them) range as widely as Elvis Presley
singing “Easy Come, Easy Go,” Bob Dylan singing “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Roll Rastafari Chariot” by the Itals,
the blues singer Albert King’s “Don’t Burn Down the Bridge,” Bruce Springsteen’s “My Best Was Never Good
Enough,” Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Things Are Seldom What They Seem” from H.M.S. Pinafore, and the coun-
try singer Lynn Anderson singing “Rose Garden.” Not surprisingly, proverbs or portions of them have often
served as titles of songs: “Actions Speak Louder Than Words” by Valée, “Que Será, Será” by Livingston and
Evans, and “Thicker Than Water” by Barry and Andy Gibb.

In English music, one finds at least two numbers titled simply Proverbs: a piece of choral music by Michael
Torke and a reggae number by The Mighty Diamonds. In German, Wilhelm Killmayer composed “Neue

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Sprichwörter und Geschichten” (“New Proverbs and Stories”) for SATB.

Moreover, individual proverbs are also incorporated into songs. In Kyrgyzstan, people chant long passages
of the proverbs of King Sulaiman (the biblical book Proverbs) after they were translated into the Kyrgyz lan-
guage in a way that fit a local metrical style for chanting.

Because proverbs are often metrical and have rhyme, alliteration, and assonance, they often fit into songs
easily. Proverbs can quickly give a song a strong link to a tradition. For example, in his campaign to establish
a new Turkish culture, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, encouraged musicians who
took elements for new Turkish music from traditional proverbs and folklore. Their use of traditional proverbs
was not merely for the content of a particular saying, but it was also a way of connecting with authentic, tra-
ditional Turkish culture. (Rappers in Istanbul today also use traditional Turkish proverbs in their lyrics, raising
the age-old question of what style of music is authentically of the folk.) Proverbs in song can also mark the
performer’s identity: The Nigerian hip-hopper 9ice sometimes switches languages in citing proverbs, intro-
ducing a traditional Yoruba proverb with an English phrase “I told you,” a way of identifying himself with both
Yoruba tradition and a cosmopolitan English-speaking identity.

Proverbs have been so closely linked to music in the English-speaking world that a number of musical groups
have used (parts of) proverbs as their names, such as The Rolling Stones, Bad Company, and Mothers of
Invention. There have been at least two groups called The Proverbs.

Proverbs and Instruments

Since music is culture and proverbs often mention things deeply rooted in the culture, it is not surprising to find
proverbs about music, musicians, and instruments. Proverbs of the general form “Pay the piper, choose the
tune” are found broadly, going back at least as far as Horace (d. 8 B.C.E.). Proverbs that mention music and
instruments are documented from languages around the world. Among proverbs that mention instruments,
they most often mention about instruments that are common in their communities; for example, proverbs
about drums are found in dozens of languages. Not surprisingly, instruments that are more narrowly identi-
fied with a particular area are found in the local proverbs: Proverbs about bagpipes are common in Scotland,
proverbs about guitars are common in Spain, but neither area has one about bassoons.

An ancient Babylonian lyre was found with a depiction of a donkey playing a lyre, depicting an ancient proverb
“An ass with a lyre,” which was later found in Greek and Latin. This is a proverb referencing musicians, visu-
ally depicted on the named instrument, a close intertwining of proverb and music.

In many parts of Africa, singing and dancing are inextricably intertwined. This can also be seen in proverbs
that refer to music and dancing, such as the Yoruba proverb “A singer without people to chorus in reply is like
somebody who dances to a single drum.” Although proverbs are generally thought of as being old, proverbs
can also reflect current culture, including music, such as a modern Beirut proverb, “Can a jackass play the
piano?”

In some tonal languages of Africa, musical instruments are used to convey proverbs, most commonly by
using drums of different pitches to reflect the varied tones of the spoken language. When spoken, proverbs
are often quite short, but when drummed, they are sometimes elongated by repetition, the longer form giving
the listener more material to hear, more clues to understand the meaning. In addition to drums, a variety of
other instruments are used to convey proverbs, including horns, slit gongs, and flutes.

See also Ghana: History, Culture, and Geography of Music; Nigeria: History, Culture, and Geography of Mu-
sic; Turkey: Modern and Contemporary Performance Practice

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© 2019 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

Peter E. Unseth
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483317731.n578
10.4135/9781483317731.n578

Further Readings

Akande, A. T., & Mosobalajie, A. (2014). The use of proverbs in hip-hop music: The example of Yoruba
proverbs in 9ice’s lyrics. Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship, 31, 35–58.
Amali, I. O. O. (1999). Sources of Idoma proverbs: A guide to paremiographers. Proverbium: Yearbook of In-
ternational Proverb Scholarship, 16, 1–20.
Avorgbedor, D. (1994). Freedom to sing, license to insult: The influence of haló performance on social vio-
lence among the Anlo-Ewe. Oral Tradition, 9, 83–112.
Daramola, Y. (2004). Yoruba proverbs in the perspective of music. Proverbium: Yearbook of International
Proverb Scholarship, 21, 27–34.
Mieder, W. (1988). Proverbs in American popular songs. Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb
Scholarship, 5, 85–101.
Mieder, W. (1993). Proverbs are never out of season: Popular wisdom in the modern age. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.

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