ABSTRACT
Happily, in the last twenty years the widespread use of tape-recorders has led to a revival in respect for the oral tradition, and to a worldwide movement in favour of oral history. Alex Haley’s famous book Roots showed how a family could preserve some of its memories from its roots in The Gambia, through the terrible experiences of slavery, to the modern urban world of the United States. His book showed, too, how oral history techniques could be combined with the evidence of historic documents to bring to life a past apparently lost forever.
