This research explores the court praise songs of Zazzau Emirate. This
particular research focuses its attention on who are these singers, what
are their songs about and what constitute the themes and the literary
styles employed in their royal court songs.The study features the songs
of court singers in Zazzau Emirate such as Sarkin Sankiran Zazzau,
Wazirin Zagi and Barayan Sarki. It also includes Rabi Bazamfara who is
the only female court singer in Zazzau Emirate that chants epithets
within the inner compound for the Emir and his wives. These royal praise
singers were randomly selected.To foreground the society it discusses,
the formation of Hausa States and the myths of the origin of songs in
Hausa land and a brief biography of the Emir of Zazzau is given. The
research adopts the functionalist approach as its theoretical framework.
The aim of using the functionalist approach for this research is to
explore the unique nature of Hausa oral art forms particularly the
praise poetry, using the field work method and also to explore the
different factors of Hausa culture.The researcher also analysed the
various literary and stylistic devices found in the selected songs such
as the themes of praise, eulogy and satire; also the figures of speech
such as metaphor, simile, personification, allusion, repetition, have
all been analysed. The significance/functions and the role of the court
singers are well discussed. The convergence and divergence of the themes
of the songs were also looked at. Finally, the state of praise singing
has also been discussed.