Oral Poetry from Africa
Ten Masai cattle songs, this time from Tanzania. These songs are from the Baraguyu dialect, and reveal an intense love of cattle and enjoyment of raiding.
The Europeans of Kilosa are proud of the police there,
But we, we are proud of our chosen loibon,
A Shona poem from Zimbabwe, recited by the farmer himself at a beer party given for his friends to celebrate his harvest. The poem ends with a well-known song in which everybody joined.
I have ploughed and I have sweated,
And now I am enjoying my crops, my friends,
Six songs, all from Malawi, sung by women using mortar and pestle to pound grain to flour, the thud of the pestle providing the songs’ rhythm.
Pounding grain,
Pounding grain makes you cry…
Pounding grain makes you cry, begins the second poem of this section. The song draws up a list of hardships which could be continued almost indefinitely. These poems are about farming and hunting, about pounding and foraging, about cattle-herding and cattle-raiding, and about warfare against neighbouring peoples and against colonial invaders. They deal with the difficulties of survival where famine, disease and violence are constant threats.
A Yorùbá song from Nigeria, chanted in praise of adornment and flamboyant clothes. The fashions of humans are compared with the bright, rich colours of various birds of the forest.
Three birds in all
There are, in the forest bounds,
A song from the Kalela Dance of the Zambian Copperbelt. The original language of this song is a form of Bemba spoken on the Copperbelt and easily understood by other people working in the mines. Most of the songs comment satirically on life on the Copperbelt.
The Watchtower were trying cunningly to convert me on Saturday,
That I should go to their meeting-place at two o’clock on Sunday.
