Fortuitous analogues - oral traditions across cultures

After my sporadic status update[!] I was asked about what I was doing, and this is what I said. At the moment, it's all a bit "untidy", so to speak. But let me go through what's still in my head.

I'm aiming to write a "play in music" - where specific groupings of instruments in a sextet taking on characters, but using the language of the performers [who are all improvising musicians]. There are no words or images. The audience picks up the drama from the sounds/music. Although it's improvised, it's given a narrative flow by the "script" I will have devised.

When I was a kid I had a fascination with Norse mythology/history. But I had always thought that they were written down. And they were, but they were mainly transmitted through Eddaic and Skaldic poetry. Eddaic poetry is the more oral tradition, and the language of the minstrel/bard. Skaldic poetry is more formal.

African mythology/history is also known as an oral tradition; and in West African traditions they talk about griots. Southern Africa is a huge region of a continent - fourteen countries if you include the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. And yet most of the stories we hear [in the UK] from the continent only come from West Africa or the country of South Africa. As far as I can tell there has been little focus on Southern African oral traditions. I suppose this is a particular interest to me since my dad is from Zambia. I guess I'm just connecting with him, in a way. I could of course just pick up the phone! But hey.

So: I'm looking for "fortuitous analogues" - stories that are the same by chance rather than design or borrowing. At the moment I'm scanning a history of the Bemba [which I understood was a language and one tribe - my dad speaks it and is Bemba - but in fact is also several people in Southern Africa] which in description is very much like a saga. I now have to go through the Norse sagas I can find, and latch on to something similar. I am sure there are others though...

Practically speaking, I began designing scores based on kennings - Norse word-forms that describe things - and this has been fun, but getting into the meat of a story is a totally different thing...

Not sure if any of that's interesting, but if anyone can help with finding stories, that'd be great!