Performance poetry in Africa dates to prehistorical times with the creation of hunting poetry, while elegiac and panegyric court poetry were developed extensively throughout the history of the empires of the Nile, Niger and Volta river valleys. "Form", as Donald Hall records "was never more than an extension of content." Performance poetry, which is kindred to performance art, is explicitly written to be performed aloud and consciously shuns the written form. "The hearing knowledge we bring to a line of poetry is a knowledge of a pattern of speech we have known since we were infants". The oral tradition is one that is conveyed primarily by speech as opposed to writing, in predominantly oral cultures proverbs (also known as maxims) are convenient vehicles for conveying simple beliefs and cultural attitudes. Eliot that "poetry remains one person talking to another". "Speak again, Speak like rain" was how Kikuyu, an East African people, described her verse to author Isak Dinesen, confirming a comment by T. Poetry, like music, appeals to the ear, an effect known as euphony or onomatopoeia, a device to represent a thing or action by a word that imitates sound. "There were poets long before there were printing presses, poetry is primarily oral utterance, to be said aloud, to be heard." Long before writing, through a cycle of practicing, listening and memorizing, each language drew on its resources of sound structure for aural patterns that made spoken poetry very different from ordinary discourse and easier to commit to memory.
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