Another in our series of Chopi Migodo, from Mozambique, collected by the great ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey. Gomukomu’s Ng’godo for 1940 is a celebration of the beauty and power of Chopi music, set against the sheer pettiness of Portuguese rule with its forced labour, its taxes and its tiresome officials.
Ng’godo: Katini 1940
The Migodo (singular Ng´godo)of the Chopi people of southern Mozambique are among the most exciting spectacles to be witnessed in Africa. They are annually staged entertainments made up of dances, songs and music played on orchestras of massed xylophones played by up to 48 musicians.
Song of the Machila-Bearers
A Lomwe song, from the early days of the Lugella Company, which in 1915 opened a Sisal plantation in north-central Mozambique. The word ‘machila’ means cloth, and became by extension the word for the hammock in which Europeans used to be carried.
You weep, you sleep stiffly, when you are old!
O — o,
You weep, you sleep stiffly, when you are old!
O — o,
Lomwe-Chuabo Protest Songs
The following songs were transcribed in the 1970’s and express the bitter hatred that many Mozambican Africans had towards the chiefs and headmen that had been appointed by the Portuguese during the colonial era.
The headman — ay ‑ay — ay
The headman harassed and seized one of my sons for Luabo…
If We Should All Die, Who Then Will You Govern?
Five Igbo satires from eastern Nigeria. These songs are of the type performed at the funerals of prominent people by groups of singers known as Abigbo singers. The satirical sections form only a part of the performances on these occasions, but the Abigbo singers are renowned for their eloquence and outspokenness.
A message should be taken to the Council men at Aboh,
Should the ruling of this world be with guns?
Who Knows What the Government is Pregnant With?
A Dinka song from southern Sudan. The situation is the civil war between the Khartoum government and the Anyanya movement which began in 1958, soon after Independence. In the early stages of the war, the northern army was ruthless in responding to southern discontent.
How does the spoiling of the world come about?
Our land is closed in a prison cell!