“Keeping Women in their Place or Contesting Power?” Gender Relations in Runyankore-Rukiga Marriage Songs among the Bakiga

Résumé

Whereas marriage songs endorse and enforce patriarchal discourses and norms, they can be used as a strategy to subvert, challenge, and question the very patriarchal discourses and norms they support. Some of the marriage songs sung among the Bakiga contain gender-based expressions, which undermine the feminine gender by advising women to be submissive. This paper explores the adoption of the Runyankore-Rukiga marriage songs as a literary genre, that is often used as an avenue wherein the resistance to the patriarchal construction of gender among the Bakiga is channelled. It examines how gender-related messages in marriage song lyrics can be invoked to challenge the existing gender power relations. Marriage songs analysed in this paper were purposively collected through recording marriage songs that were performed on marriage ceremonies among the Bakiga. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was adopted as a methodological and theoretical framework to interrogate whether Runyankore-Rukiga marriage songs can act as an avenue through which gender inequalities, masculine domination, and feminine subordination among the Bakiga can be demystified and resisted. The findings reveal that while traditional marriage songs tend to sustain patriarchy, contemporary marriage songs do provide singers with an opportunity to publicly criticise those unacceptable cultural practices that undermine the feminine gender. The study recommends the use of marriage songs as an ideological platform for the contestation and redefining of gender construction among the Bakiga; as well as challenging the traditional Bakiga gender inequalities