Ghinnawa
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Through Blues, Anthropology and Oral literature
Ghinnawa is a form of folk poetry, in the sense that anyone in Awlad Ali society could author a ghinnawa. In a broader context, the ghinnawa may be looked upon as non-standard discourse that is a means of coping with social reality, similar to other discourse forms in the Arab world like the hikaya folktales of Tunisia or the gussa allegories of the Bedouin of the Sinai Peninsula.
Themes
Ghinnawas usually have sad themes - typically being the lament of lost love, unless sung at celebrations like a circumcision or a wedding. Ghinnawas are sung by women, boys and also on rare occasions by men. Ghinnawa semantics are well-defined only in context, because of their personal nature. Contents of ghinnawas are considered personal, even sensitive to the extent that Lila Abu Lughod was warned "never to reveal any women's poems to men".
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Social expression
The Awlad Ali do not have a strong history of public displays of emotion. Modesty or deference and boasting or anger are typically the most commonly expressed public emotion. Most other forms of expression take place through ghinnawas.
Delivery and structure
Ghinnawas may be written down, which is often the case for intergender communication, but can be spoken as substitute to normal conversation, or sung. The structure of the ghinnawa is very different in written and oral forms.
Structurally, ghinnawas are approximately 15-syllable couplets. They can be broken up into 2 hemistiches. If the written form be represented as :
1234
56789
the oral form unspools into 16 lines as follows:
78
78
789
78
6789
78
78
6789
78
78
781
1234
78
78
56
56789
Each ghinnawa typically has many variations, and may even be sung with minor variations in a single singing.