Oral Poetry from Africa
A thrift-club, known in Yorùbá as Esusu, is a voluntary society which helps its members to raise money. Every member pays a fixed sum of money regularly at a fixed time (say every fifth or ninth day).
All you persons of prestige here gathered together,
I greet the woodcock with its characteristic ‘mese’ cry…
A Swahili dance song, recorded in the 1860s, giving a glimpse of sophisticated life in the coastal cities in earlier centuries. The song is also called ‘The Stumbling Figure’. Bishop Steere calls it ‘Gungu’ or ‘The Hesitation Dance’, adding “it is the custom meet about ten or eleven at night and dance on until daybreak…”
Mother take me that I may see, may see
Beauty and ornaments at Ungama…
A love song, translated from Amharic, the language of government in Ethiopia, spoken originally by the Amhara people of the northern and central highlands. Theirs is a Christian community of great antiquity, the land of the legendary Prester John, its ruling house claiming descent from Solomon and Sheba.
You lime of the forest, honey among the rocks,
Lemon of the cloister, grape in the savannah…
An Ngoni song from northern Malawi, sung at girls’ initiation ceremonies. The Ngoni were driven into exile by Shaka Zulu’s conquests, and this song presents Shaka’s achievements from the point of view of people who suffered from them.
It is because of Zwide, chief of the Soshangane people
That though I lie down I cannot sleep…
This is another version of the song in praise of palm-wine, attributed to Liyongo the national hero of the Swahili people. See also Liyongo’s Drinking Song for a different version of this song.
O tapster of soured wine,
from the sheath of the withered palm…
A Rukiga love song, from the Abakiga “people of the mountains”, who straddle the border between northern Ruanda and southern Uganda. As so often in these poems, the images are drawn from the cattle they rear, the bananas they grow as a staple crops, and the natural life of their region.
Eye of a calf
Neck like the crested crane’s…
