Metaphorical Expressions in Hausa Court Songs: A Study of Sa’idu Faru’s Waƙar Mamman Sarkin Kudu

Sa’idu Faru is one of the prominent court singers in Hausa land. He composed quite several songs and one of such is the one titled Waƙar Mamman Sarkin Kudu. This song, like many other songs, is characterized by different figures of speech. These figures of speech are normally employed to showcase one’s mastery of a language on one hand and to achieve a certain literary effect on the other. One of the prominent figures of speech is metaphor. This paper aims to extract metaphorical expressions in this song and examine the role they play in the performance of the song and in aiding to convey the message contained in the song to the audience. The version of the song used is the one in the appendix of a PhD thesis by Magaji Tsoho Yakawada (2002) and the analysis is a literary stylistic study. The analysis reveals that many metaphorical expressions are contained in the song and most of them are through a direct comparison of the person being praised (the patron) or his opponents with some animals in an attempt to reveal some special attributes of either the former or the latter as the case may be.