Oral Poetry from Africa
A drinking song from Benin, formerly Dahomey, celebrating the pleasures of life which should be enjoyed while we have the opportunity. Agongolo, who was King of Dahomey in the late eighteenth century, is chiefly remembered chiefly for two things: for good living, and for ‘walking in blood’.
If I had money
I should buy drinks to drink…
Another song from the Kalela Dance of the Zambian Copperbelt (see also the Kalela Dance). The original language of this song is a form of Bemba spoken on the Copperbelt and easily understood by other people working in the mines.
Mothers, I have been to many courts
To listen to the cases they settle…
An interlude in a Sotho Praise-Poem from Lesotho. The poem is addressed to Nathaniel Makotoko, one of the Sotho’s most famous military commanders.
The armies left the Great Place in full strength:
And when we arrived at the place of Lesaoana…
This song was recorded by Romanus N. Egudu (n.d.) in the Udi Division of Igboland, Nigeria. The song is a pleasant game with words, but it can be taken in different ways. The boy has lost his pet rat. Everyone knows where the rat is. Is the problem that they daren’t approach the leopard’s house? Or is it implied that the leopard has eaten them all?
The boy was looking for his rat.
Nda
His rat was hiding in leopards’s house…
Malam Aliyu na Mangi was the leading poet of the Hausa in the mid-20th century. Born in 1895, within his first year he lost his sight through an attack of measles and smallpox. Despite this, he became a Malam learning by heart the texts required to become an Islamic scholar.
We give thanks to the Lord of the Worlds
for the bounty bestowed on us in no small measure…
A song of the Luo people, from Kenya. This is a courtship poem, sung by young women as they approach where their lovers are staying. It is sung in a curiously artificial style, intended to show off the girls’ voices. The doree ree yo is a passage of very high-pitched vocal acrobatics, compared by the singer to birdsong.
I am possessed,
A bird bursting on high with the ree lament
