ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the cultural significance of poetry that is presented orally within the Zion Christian Church (ZCC). Such poetry belongs to the African-Initiated Church's oral tradition, the chapter analyses this mode of oral tradition is one that assumes that as a source of oral history, oral data are situated within specific cultures. ZCC poetry analysed in this chapter was recorded by the church across the three generations of its leadership since its founding in 1910. The achievement of ZCC micro intergenerational communication by means of the endemically recognizable epic structure of the poems analysed to magnify into a macro intergenerational communication that is an index of the evolving cultural outlooks of the African communities in its ambience, who are not necessarily members of the church. The chapter performs the category of researched data called the 'narrative' in the oral tradition analysed by means of the oral history method.
