Oral Poetry from Africa
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
A very old Ngoni poem from Malawi. This was a poem traditionally performed at weddings, but became popularly sung at other occasions such as church meetings. The refrain, ‘the earth does not get fat’, refers to the earth constantly consuming the dead.
The earth does not get fat.
It makes an end of those who wear the head plumes
A Shona song from Zimbabwe, sung by a mother at a dance in praise of her daughter’s singing. What is especially admired is a voice higher and purer than all the others, like the new moons flute.
E! There’s my one, drowning all the others.
Listen, girls, and hear what she’s to sing!
The following Northern Sotho poem appears to be about a leopard; but the allusion is to the chiefs of the Tlokwa, whose symbol was a leopard.
It is the yellow leopard with the spots
The yellow leopard of the cliffs
A Kgatla song from Botswana, sung by women complaining together about their husbands. The reference to ‘Khaki’ in line 5 suggests not only that the man is poor but also that he may be a court messenger or some other collaborator with the colonial authorities (see Lomwe-Chuabo Protest Songs).
I heard it said that I was betrothed
And one afternoon when I was at home
Unlike the longer gabay poems of Somalia, the buraambur is a poem composed by women for women — although men have been known to be interested listeners. In this example of the buraambur, a woman sings of her love for someone she has only had the pleasure of meeting once.
Oh, you are like a kilt which a young dandy set out to choose,
Oh, you are like a costly ring for which thousands were paid
