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On the savanna, life centers around the movement of herds across vast, grassy plains. The region's music reflects this constant motion. Choruses are sung in response to the call of a lone lead-singer. Maasai herders create songs on a daily basis, either as entertainment or just to tell stories of tending cattle, or of women working at home. The Kikuyu also incorporate music into everyday life, but the sounds are quieter - a reflection of the more restricted surroundings of their woodland home.
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Kolasi (Kikuyu)
This Kikuyu song is about a boy who wants to marry his sweetheart, as he discusses the arrangements with the girl's father. It is performed with an accordion and two pieces of scrap iron struck together to make a cymbal-like noise.
 Listen to the song. Music Credit: ILAM, Rhodes University
Mwomboko (Kikuyu)
This Kikuyu song is played to accompany a town dance called Mwomboko. In the Mwomboko men and women dance in pairs. Men press their partners to their chests, and occasionally spin them around. It is performed with an accordion and iron cymbals
Listen to the song. Music Credit: ILAM, Rhodes University
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Atalwa Endito (Maasai)
This song is performed in the embrukoi style while men and women dance. The song recounts a man's elopement with another man's wife. It goes on to describe the man's cattle on the hills near Arusha in central Tanzania. A second man takes over the solo half-way through.
Listen to the song. Music Credit: ILAM, Rhodes University
Photo and Object Credits:
American Museum of Natural History
Drum, 1877 - Lute, 1907
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