Showing posts with label imihubo ngoni. Show all posts
Showing posts with label imihubo ngoni. Show all posts

Sunday, July 25, 2010

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War Songs of the Ngoni People

  • Sunday, July 25, 2010
  • Samuel Albert
  • By Margaret Read. It also includes youtube videos and some explanations provided by the moderator of this blog.

    To the Ngoni war was man's work. Throughout their history as a separate people they were a nation under arms, and on the success of their arms depended their existence as conquerors. Their life was organised in every detail to make them efficient as warriors, and in the preparations for war, songs and dances played an essential part. There was one group of war songs, imigubo, sung before going out to fight, another, imihubo, sung on the return from the war. The imigubo are danced today in Gomani's country in full war dress with shields and spears, and only in the Paramount's village, the place of mobilisation of the army in the old days. The Ngoni women join in the dance, some inside the circle of men, some outside, and the tempo of the dance works up and up as it did in old days to inspire men with the lust of battle.

    It is in the group of war songs that I have found those which are common both to Gomani's and M'mbelwa's country, and which therefore point to a common source in the south. Though the songs appear brief in their wording, much of the tune is sung to 'sounds' such as inyo ho, zi, oya ye yayo, and accompaniment is varied with stamping the feet and knocking the shields either with spears or against the knees.

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    Saturday, May 29, 2010

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    THE INSTALLATION OF INKOSI YA MAKOSI GOMANI III IN 1966

  • Saturday, May 29, 2010
  • Samuel Albert
  • Below is an eye witness account of the installation of Inkosi yamakhosi Gomani III in 1966. Another important piece of history that we dare not forget. Enjoy

    Author(s): G.T NURSE

    Only two persons in Malawi are entitled to be saluted, Bayete! On cold geographical grounds it is surprising that there should be so many. The eldest traditions of the Bantu speak of slow movements of people from north to south, west to east, less commonly east to west; only in comparatively recent and rare instances, from south to north. The sudden northward irruption in the second quarter of the last century, of Kalolo into the headwaters of the Zambesi, and that subsequent and lesser extension of theirs in the company of David Livingstone which ended in the assumption of a handful of minor chieftaincies in the Shire valley, were remarkable enough; but the convulsion which sent whole brave regiments of Zulu and Swazi warriors to extinguish what remained of the empire of Monomotapa, to establish a hegemony over the Tumbuka, to halt the Yao, to cleave the Marabvi in two and to set up outposts as far from their starting point as central Tanganyika, may not unworthily be compared with certain of the volkerwanderungen, so pregnant with consequences, of the dark ages of Europe.

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