This week, I witnessed a part of the local culture I had never seen before. A poetry battle.
About twelve of us were sitting around a campfire on a mountainside that overlooked the distant lights of Caravan City. It was coming toward the end of the evening. We had grilled and eaten skewered pieces of chicken, munched on sunflower seeds, and drunk our chai and Nescafé. Already, some of the men, thinking of work in the morning, were asking if it would be time to go soon.
A request by one of the men present to swap riddles and jokes had ultimately foundered upon the rocks of attempted translation from one language to another, something this particular group of guys keeps trying, even though the results are usually rather anticlimactic. Nothing like dropping what you think is a strong punchline only to be met with blank or confused looks, silence, or worse, a few polite chuckles.
I did make one successful joke in the course of the evening, when the men had started up a hearty rendition of a favorite childhood song here, which goes something like,
I’m a pig; you’re a pig; hey, all of us are pigs!
I told them to hold on and start over because I wanted to record the song for the sake of ‘the future generations.’ This caused a surprising outburst of laughter among all the men.
“For the sake of future generations! That’s a good one! Hahahaha!’
Alas, my funniest joke of the evening wasn’t even one I was really attempting to make. But when the proverbial blind squirrel finds a nut, he is proud of himself nevertheless.
Shortly after this, one man, a young journalist, told us he’d like to read us a poem he’d written.
He pulled it up on his phone as the rest of the circle of men quieted down and leaned in. Unlike much of Western culture, our Central Asian locals are still very awake to the beauty and power of poetry, especially the men. But what I was about to witness highlighted this for me in a whole new way.
Still seated, our cookout poet sat up as straight as he could in his camping chair and puffed out his chest. With one hand holding his phone out so he could read it and the other hand partially lifted in front of him, he began dropping rhythmic lines about his people’s history and long struggle for freedom. His raised hand moved up and down to emphasize the rhyming end of each line, a gesture that was followed by growing affirmations from the circle of men, a sort of ‘amening’ of each statement made.
The intensity, emotion, and volume of the poem and the affirmations grew as the poem progressed, finishing with a climactic final rhyme and chorus of applause. Even though I had only gotten half of the meaning of the poem, it was easy to feel the powerful effect of this kind of poetic oratory.
But it wasn’t over. Another man on the other side of the circle cleared his throat and shifted in his camping chair,
“Friends,” he announced, “I have an answer to that!”
What proceeded from those present was the sort of noises men in all cultures make when a challenger is announced, plus more applause.
Apparently, the first poem had not only been patriotic, but also colored with loyalty to one of the two dominant political parties/families of our region. This other man was loyal to the other party/family and was about to drop some partisan lines of his own.
His poem progressed much the way the first one had. Similar authoritative body language. Similar expressions of approval after particularly good rhythms and rhymes, and a climactic crash of louder verse and applause at the end.
The two of them went back and forth like this four or five times. Like a rap battle, the volume of the crowd’s response to each poem seemed to be the gauge of which one was winning. In the end, to me, it looked like a draw.
The atmosphere of our little campfire was now more alive than it had been all evening, and the rest of us now had the opportunity to share any favorite lines of verse that we had either written or memorized. I was thankful that one of the local believers bravely shared some lines of Christian poetry he’d recently written, since many of those present were not believers. I shared the one verse of local poetry I’ve ever memorized, one I’d once learned back in Poet City from a taxi driver.
A wish for the days of homemade naan In a thousand homes, a pilgrim only one Now for all, "pilgrimmy pilgrim" is claimed But pilgrims they're not, nor their bread e'en homemade
Once again, the applause I received for this very small segment of a poem against Islamic pharasaism was very warm, and probably much more than my lackluster delivery deserved.
As we drove home, I asked one of the local believers with us about the poetry exchange we had witnessed that night. I told him that was the first time I’d seen it.
“Oh yes,” he said, “We have that in our culture, though we don’t do it as much anymore. Poetry battles. We also have proverb battles. And song battles too.”
I had once seen some YouTube videos of some local song battles, but I found it curious that, after almost a decade living in this culture, I had never seen a poetry battle like this before. I asked the other foreigner who was with us that night, and he hadn’t either. It seemed to be yet another gap in our knowledge of the local culture.
Over the last number of months, I’ve continued to chew on how most missionaries here think that preaching, monologues by leaders, and skillful, authoritative oratory are foreign, Western things. As I’ve written before, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Our local culture has great respect for and takes great pleasure in skillful public oratory of all kinds. Yet this great disconnect persists, somehow, and the majority of missionaries remain convinced that informal group discussions are the thing that is truly local and contextual, and preaching and an old-fashioned and ineffective Western form.
I mused on this as we drove down the mountain at midnight. As it turns out, locals recite even their poems as if they’re preaching. No, recite is the wrong verb. What I saw during the poetry battle was not recitation, it was proclamation. Each poet was aiming to persuade the minds and hearts of his hearers of the truth and beauty of his message. The tone and posture of these poets were that of crafted conviction. Or, as Martin Lloyd Jones once said of preaching – logic on fire.
Through local eyes, it makes the way we Westerners casually lead our Bible discussions look limp, spineless, like we don’t really believe what we’re saying. Why do we missionaries persist in presenting the word of God like we do when locals present even their private poems with so much more authority and conviction?
So much for preaching being a foreign thing. No, once again, I must conclude that, here in Central Asia, preaching is everywhere. After all, even their poets are preachers.
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Entrusted to the Dirt 