Oral Literature in Africa (40 page)

Figure 16. Work company of singing threshers at Sanasi’s farm, Kakarima, where the work is accomplished with amazing speed and joy, the rhythm being essential to coordinate the blows
,
1961 (photo Ruth Finnegan).

Many Limba consider the songs used for threshing even more attractive. In these—normally sung by rather smaller groups—the words are more developed, more variation seems to be encouraged and many different songs are sung on one occasion. There is no drumming and usually no specialist singer, for even the leader takes part in the work, albeit a little less vigorously and regularly than the others. The occasion of threshing is a happy one: the harvest is on the way to completion, there is plenty of food once again, and the moment that has been looked forward to throughout the year has arrived. The rice is piled up on the threshing area, and the young men gather round with their sticks, raising them in a ring of a dozen or so at a time. Another ring may form at the other end of the threshing floor, and, led by the most expert singer, the two groups begin by answering to each other’s song in turn, repeating the verse inaugurated by the leader. Later they join together in the chorus. Again a fourfold rhythm forms the framework of the music and the work, this time with the stress on the third beat, followed by a pause as the sticks are raised and the men take a step together, kicking up the straw, to move down the floor—beat, beat,
beat,
pause; one, two,
three,
step. With heavy sticks about three feet long, brought down with great force, the co-ordinated timing given by the rhythm of the music is indeed necessary to avoid accidents as well as to encourage and delight both workers and bystanders. They may sing, for example:

and so on and on with constant repetitions of the soloist’s verses. This time the dancing is quite explicit. The step onwards is a dance step, the movements are thought beautiful in themselves, and sometimes the rice is beaten only twice so that the dance can be elaborated in the time of the third beat. The work is exhausting and the men run with sweat—but the dominant feeling is of a festive and artistic occasion.
²³

Canoeing songs are common among many riparian and coastal peoples. They are especially well known in the Zambesi area. The Chikunda people, for instance, are known as excellent watermen along the Zambesi from its mouth to Feira, and their boat songs are excellently designed to accompany the rhythm of their paddling:

The outside hand holds the paddle shaft below the bulwarks and over the side. The shaft is then tapped on the boatside during the stroke and again as it is being withdrawn from the water. Then there is a pause before the new stroke. The rhythm is one of four beats, thus—instroke, tap, tap, silent, in, tap, tap, silent. This gives the effect of triple time, and so a cross rhythm results when combined with the singing. The speed of stroke varies between 40 and 44 to the minute.

(Denny 1936–37: 35–6)

The songs are usually sung by a soloist, often encouraged by shouts from his companions, while the chorus comes in with meaningless words like
aye, oyo, ndende
. Sometimes they are sung antiphonally, one side of paddles answered by the other (Kidney 1921: 119). The actual words are simple, and the attraction of the songs seems to lie in the music and the rhythm that accompany the steady stroke of the paddle. There is also some interest in the subject-matter, which, however sketchy, distracts from the labour of the moment:

Let the horn sound!

Sound the trumpet;

Yes, let it sound.

(Ibid.: 41)

This is a song about drinking: the beer is finished, so now let us dance, to drums and horns. Or again:

Leave the drum, leave the drum,

Leave the dance.

I wear clothes

Because I am clever.

(Idem)

The background to the third song is said to be a husband’s asking his wife where she had got extra clothes beyond what he himself had given her.
She replies with this song repeated over and over by the paddlers. The next song is also about love, the song of the cunning Don Juan who has only to look at a woman and speak for her to come—but he never marries properly and is always in trouble with the parents:

I have married a wife with my eyes,

The dowry was my mouth, ye ye;

I have married with my eyes.

(Denny 1936–37: 38)

Many of the other songs too are about everyday matters—love and marriage, leaving and returning home, dancing, eating, family life. About the only one that refers to the river at all is about the hippopotamus (poetically called a rhinoceros), which is a favourite dish along the river:

O rhinoceros, O man rhinoceros,

Rhinoceros of the river banks

Is good to eat with tomatoes.

(Ibid.: 42)

The same type of subject-matter also occurs in songs by some of the Congo river boatmen. The Mabale paddle songs recorded by Tanghe (1926–8) are more often about local events, death, the ancestors, or the local chief than about the monotonous and protracted labour of propelling the canoes. The rhythm of the paddles provides the framework of the song. The binary measure in the song matches the twofold structure of the paddle strokes—first a strong beat corresponding to the tension of the muscles and sweep of the paddles, further marked by the beat of an accompanying gong or drum; and secondly a relatively feeble beat while the paddles rest. These paddle songs are sometimes by a soloist echoed by a chorus but, unlike the Chikunda examples, they are more often sung by the whole crew, preceded and accompanied by the beat of a drum. Consonant with this pattern the words are short and simple in the extreme. The song

Ekouloulou, qui rames incessamment;

Ekouloulou, qui rames incessamment;

Ekouloulou, qui rames incessamment …

(Ekululu jaboluka ntek’ …)

repeated over and over in unison is one of the few to refer to the actual work—the crew compare themselves to the little
ekululu
fish that is always swimming. (Tanghe 1926–28: 830; 832) Even simpler are the words which alternate between solo and chorus:

(Tanghe 1926–28: 830; 836)

or:

(Tanghe 1926–8: 830)

The structure is also simple, and, like many such songs, depends fundamentally on various types of repetition: repetition of the same formula (with or without a pause); repetition with a slight variation the second time through; and alternation and repetition of two different phrases, sometimes with variation. They are sung in a slow, monotonous, and plaintive way, repeated over and over in uniform and regular measure, with the low and constant accompaniment of gong or drum in the background. Each song is brought to an end by a long-drawn-out final note, followed by a long low note, not really part of the song itself.

While most of these Mabale paddle songs are sung in unison, occasionally led by one of the paddlers, there is also sometimes a specialist singer. This is a young man with a reputation for both his voice and his repertoire of songs who comes specially to sing and is exempt from paddling. He may sing in alternation with chorus, but sometimes performs freely on his own, a situation which is held to lead to the best songs of all. Yet even here, it seems, the words themselves are relatively unimportant. What matters is the regular repetition that stimulates and eases the effort of paddling:

Hélas, mon enfant;

Hélas, je le pleure;

Hélas, avec douleur;

Saurais-je l’oublier, hélas.
²⁴

(Ibid. 831; 838)

Hélas, mère;

Hélas, mère;

Un homme est tombé;

Un homme est mort …
²⁵

(Ibid.: 830).

The occasions mentioned so far all involve rhythmic work by a group of people in co-operation. But there are also solitary work songs. Grinding
corn, for instance, though sometimes done by several women, is also often performed by one woman alone. This is a situation that gives scope to the expression of more personal feelings, uttered at greater length, than in the group songs. Thus a Kamba woman’s grinding song is concerned with her own experiences. She was married to a man employed at a German Leipzig Mission Station, a place with large whitewashed buildings that she compares to the hills. She had once said she never wished to set foot in a mission station, but even so she has now left her parents and come to live here at the ‘master’s’ (missionary’s) place:

Let me be! Let me grind my flour in peace and recover from my grief!

You tell me that I have now neither people nor mother.

Although I once said that I would never come to these ‘hills’,

Yet I have come here to build my hut at the master’s (place).

These high hills, they shine like the seeds of the
kivuti
²⁶
tree, or like coins.

I am tending my father’s roaming bull.

(Lindblom iii, 1934: 48–9)

A similar personal comment is evident in a Sotho domestic song, the lament of a woman whose man is away:

Far, far away at Molelle’s place,

Where is the train going?

He has been away at the mines too long.

I, poor child, always say that.

I have lost my relatives

And have no one to tell me what to do.

(
Afr. Music
2, 2, 1959: 76)

The various types of work songs can be seen to shade into songs for dancing, for in each case the singing accompanies rhythmic movement. The difference, obviously, is that dance movements are not regarded as monotonous or laborious. But even so there is some overlap between the two, with ‘work songs’ also functioning as, or following the pattern of, dance songs. Thus the Swahili truck-pushing song quoted above has all the characteristics of an up-country
ngoma
(dance) song (Werner 1927: 102). Some tasks, furthermore, are carried out in a half-dancing manner, so that, as with the Limba threshing songs, the work becomes attractive and artistic rather than merely laborious, and the song a background to a kind of dance as well as to labour.

This discussion of work songs has already involved some mention of their style. Since they typically accompany collective rhythmical movement, it is not surprising that a common form is that of leader and chorus. The chorus words tend to be particularly simple, often meaningless—
iyo, ayo, ye ye,
etc.—or involve repetition from the solo part. The soloist has more scope to develop or improvise his words, particularly when, as sometimes happens, he is not expected to take part in the work directly but can concentrate on his singing (and on the musical accompaniment or even dancing that he is also at times responsible for). But even so, the wording of these songs is usually simple. Typically the leader only sings a line or two of his own before his words are taken up by the chorused refrain brought in by the rhythm of the work, and there is little opportunity for elaboration of the verbal content. The structure of a Southern Rhodesian work song recorded by Tracey is characteristic in this respect. The poetry of the words results in a carefully balanced piece of verse, but the words themselves have little significance: