The following poem, ‘Macaan iyo Qadhaadh’ or “Bitter and Sweet”, was composed by Axmed Ismaciil Diriye Qaasim, who died recently in exile.
Consider the aloe – how bitter is its taste!
Yet sometimes there wells up a sap so sweet…
More Somali Balwo
Songs of the Baggara
The Baggara, meaning “cow-herders”, are composed of several Arab groups living in that part of the Sahel region between Lake Chad and southern Kordofan.
The fair ones, Mahmud’s three daughters,
Umm Misel daughter of Kir…
The Iron Sheets
A ChiChewa song from the southern region of Malawi about the perils of matrilocal marriage. The singer has married into “a women’s village”, Njenjema, where the land is inherited through the female line and everything is controlled by the wife’s family.
At Njenjema, do not dare
At Njenjema, do not dare…
Maize has a Market
A spirit possession song from the southern region of Malawi, sung in ChiChewa and opening for the outsider a window on the sufferings of a society where children had, and have, only a 50% chance of surviving infancy. For women like Effie Musa from whom this song was recorded in August 1982, witchcraft practiced by one of her neighbours was the only plausible explanation.
Maize has a Market
Sorghum has a Market..
Lullaby
A Kamba lullaby from Kenya for singing babies to sleep. The singer calls her child ‘Mama’ as a form of endearment by which a child is addressed as a parent.
Mama, child’s mother, don’t cry like a poor person.
You have come to me, you are crying more than I used to…
