Oral Poetry from Africa
Three Zulu hymns. Isaiah Shembe, the founder and leader of the Zulu Church which bears his name, wrote many hymns. In them, Zulu and Christian traditions are united to express the aspirations of an exploited people.
I shouted day and night:
Why did you not hear me?
A Gikuyu nationalist song from Kenya, from the days of the Independence struggle. These songs were performed in the forest where the fighters would camp, and later a number of the songs were published in what became known as the Kikuyu Hymnbook.
When our Kimathi ascended
Into the mountain alone…
An extract from a Sotho Praise-Poem from Lesotho. In 1926, there was a succession dispute over the Paramount Chieftaincy in which the Roman Catholic missionaries supported Chief Seeiso’s rival.
Seeiso accepts no cowards;
The children of the family of Mary he rejects:
An extract from a Xhosa Praise-Poem addressed to Kaiser Mantanzima by the Praise-Singer Phakamile Yali-Manisi. It explains the present disastrous position of the Xhosa people as a consequence of the alliance between the missionaries and Sir George Grey, Governor of Cape Province 1854–61, in seizing Xhosa land and destroying the Xhosa economy.
It all started with the conversion,
We accepted the conversion in the belief that we were accepting God…
A Hausa poem from northern Nigeria. This is an Islamic poem, composed in writing but intended for public performance. The prospect of the day of resurrection is a warning to all who do evil.
Know you that tyranny will be darkness on the Day of Resurrection,
It is the word of the Messenger of God, Muhammed…
The Fulani creation myth from northern Nigeria. Doondari is the creator. The five elements in the first half of the poem (stone, iron, fire, water and air) are carefully balanced against the five stages of man’s suffering and triumph in the second half.
At the beginning there was a huge drop of milk.
Then Doondari came and he created the stone
