What was the role of the traditional praise poet as seen in Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman?

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PRAISE-SINGER: Far be it for me to belittle the
dwellers of that place but, a man is either born to his are or he isn't. And I don't
know for certain that you'll meet my father, so who is going to sing these deeds in
accents that will pierce the deafness of the ancient ones. I have prepared my going -
just tell me: 'Olohun-iyo, I need you on this journey' and I shall be behind
you.

ELESIN: ... Stay close to me, but only on this side. My fame, my
honour are legacies to the living; stay behind and let the world sip its honey from your
lips.

PRAISE-SINGER: Your name will be like the sweet berry .... The
world will never spit it out.
[...]

PRAISE-SINGER: ... there
is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race.
If that world leaves its course and smashes on the boulders of the great void, whose
world will give us
shelter?

The role of the
traditional praise poet--or, more properly stated, praise-singer--is outlined in the
opening scene of Wole Soyinka's play Death and the King's Horseman.
Both the praise-singer and Elesin describe the role of the praise-singer. As in all
traditions of oral story telling, going back to before Homer's
Iliad, praise-singers memorize the details of feats of courage,
strength, love, or victory performed by the local heroes and champions. These stories,
set to rhythm and rhyme and memorized as poetry, are told as poetic epics to villagers
and to communities of villages. The objective is to preserve a living history of the
events of the passing times and to preserve the biographies of the great local
personages.

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PRAISE-SINGER: Your name will be like the sweet
berry .... The world will never spit it
out.

To perform this task,
they follow and are in attendance with the heroes and champions as they go into
situations that will try and test their worthiness. Soyinka demonstrates this, along
with the role already described, in the quoted passage above, in which we see that the
praise-singer is following and chanting to Elesin as he makes his first entrance to the
market place.

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ELESIN: ... Stay close to me, but only on this
side. My fame, my honour are legacies to the living; stay behind and let the world sip
its honey from your lips.

In
addition, the praise-singer ties the deeds and prowess of the individual in with the
history, greatness and worthiness of the whole village, community and race, as the
Praise-Singer makes clear by inferring that his task is also to provide, through his
poetic song, the knowledge of the shell of their souls and world of the spirit of their
race:

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PRAISE-SINGER: ... there is only one shell to the
soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our
race.