Oral Poetry from Africa
A Kamba girls’ song from Kenya, danced at weddings when the bride is being escorted to her new home. The singer, little Kitanga, tells the bride Mulau and all her friends that it is time to stop grieving over Mulau’s departure.
Change heart,
we have wept enough over losing you, ee you!
A Kipsigi song from Kenya. The old man is appealing to his clan, the Kapmorosek, after his son has been murdered and his cattle stolen in a raid by a rival clan.
Send a message to the Kapmorosek,
Tell them I am not as in past years:
A Swahili poem, well known along the East Coast of Africa. The poem is a husband’s praise of his wife Mwananazi.
Give me a chair that I may sit down
And serenade my Mwananazi,
A Swahili love-song from the East African coast, and probably the best known and most widely admired of all Swahili poems in translation. Like Mwananazi, it is associated with Liyongo, the Swahili national hero.
O lady, be calm and cry not but sing to your suitors.
Sing to those who guide you and to the discerning passers-by
A Gikuyu song from Kenya, describing a battle during the Independence struggle in the 1950s. General Kariba’s group in the Kenya Levellation Army fought the British on Tumu Tumu Hill near Kirimukuyu. The heroism of Waruanja who went disguised to spy out the British position, and of Kanjunio, the girl who brought back his report, and of Gakuru who sacrificed his life to destroy the machine guns, are all commemorated.
Listen and hear this story
Of the Tumu Tumu Hill!
A Masai poem from Kenya, describing a raid on the cattle of the Somalis. The first half boasts of the raiders’ skill in evading detection — by the Europeans playing golf, by the police askaris and by the night watchman who snored ‘like a hippo‘. The second half rejoices over the beauty of the cattle they have seized.
The Europeans playing golfu,
Ho! We saw them!
