The Ugandan scholar Pio Zirimu introduced the term orature in an attempt to avoid an oxymoron, but oral literature remains more common both in academic and popular writing.
In Songs and Politics in Eastern Africa, edited by Kimani Njogu and Hervé Maupeu (2007), it is stated (page 204) that Zirimu, who coined the term, defines orature as "the use of utterance as an aesthetic means of expression" (as quoted by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, 1988).
The reason is that there are elements to oral traditions in these places that cannot be captured by words alone, such as the existence of gestures, dance, and the interaction between the storyteller and the audience.
In this sense, oral lore is an ancient practice and concept natural to the earliest storied communications and transmissions of bodies of knowledge and culture in verbal form from the dawn of language-based human societies, and 'oral literature' thus understood was putatively recognized in times prior to recordings of history in non-oral media, including painting and writing.
In 1960, Albert B. Lord published The Singer of Tales, which influentially examined fluidity in both ancient and later texts and "oral-formulaic" principles used during composition-in-performance, particularly by contemporary South Slavic bards relating long traditional narratives.