{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.025793650793650792, 'fraction_numerical': 0.003968253968253968, 'mean_word_length': 4.89766081871345, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
THE COMPLEXITIES OF POPULAR CULTURE

[2335] reads: ‘Timbuktu: Timbuktu is an ancient city in northeastern Mali that dates to the twelfth century.’ Other annotations are superfluous: there are numerous cases where the annotation consists of a single short sentence that repeats part of the line from the translation. Fifthly, the bibliography consists of fewer than forty references, and many of them are quoted only once for information that is so generally known and so widely accepted that it does not need a reference. Sixthly, there is no attempt to link the epic text to the history of Kaabu or to contextualize it within the historiography of Kaabu; there is, for instance, no reference even to the ambitious and voluminous Tarikh Mandinka de Bijini (GuinéeBissau): La mémoire des Mandinka et des Sòoninkee du Kaabu by Cornelia Giesing and Valentin Vydrine, published in 2007. Finally, the proofs do not seem to have been sufficiently checked: the line numbering in the text and the annotation are often not in step. Moreover, a sign for a Mandinka consonant is often transcribed as ‘ng’, but sometimes maintained, while another sign is in both the Mandinka and English transcription represented as ‘ ñ ’. I finish with a point that really struck me, but to which the author gives no attention – the ‘matri-centric’ dimension of the text: Kelefaa has a conflict on succession with his mother’s brother, and there are several other references that emphasize maternal descent. Therefore, the Kelefaa tradition hints at a different political system than the patrilineal kinship discourse that is dominant in Mande politics. In sum, this book is an excellent teaching tool : it will help students of oral literature, African literature, and African history deepen their understanding of praise poetry and epics, and it may increase their enthusiasm for the study of oral tradition. However, historians may yet need to view it as similar in status to a primary source – a text that still needs to be contextualized.