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Native Poetry in East Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

A. Werner
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Extract

‘East Africa’ is a somewhat vague term; but for our present purpose we may take it to mean the area between Cape Guardafui and the Zambezi, extending inland to the Great Lakes, and including Nyasaland. Our subject naturally falls under two headings: we have on the one hand to consider the inchoate and sometimes only half articulate poetry of the inland tribes, and on the other the literature, as it may fitly be called, developed by the Swahili under Arab influence, but all the same a genuine product of the soil. The poetic output of the Hamitic Somali and Galla, though little known at present, is certainly worth attention.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , July 1928 , pp. 348 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1928

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References

page 349 note 1 Presumably the absence of money is referred to as a stimulus to exertion, involving a vigilant eye on the traffic in the narrow streets.

page 350 note 1 Makwatakwata is an expression used ‘of one who marries wives in different places, but has no permanent home’; the Nyanja and Yao custom being for the man to live at his wife's village.

page 350 note 2 Lit. ‘irons’; perhaps cymbals, or clashing anklets and armlets may be meant.

page 351 note 1 The river, known to the Swahili as Tana, is called Tsana by the Wapokomo themselves.

page 351 note 2 The general meaning of these ditties is: A Somali labourer has stolen dates and halwa and is being pursued with sticks; A carrier's song; the singer calls for a drum (to accompany him?) and states that Kisowero is the place for the hunter.

page 352 note 1 A kikuba is a small bunch of jasmine blossoms or other sweet-scented flowers or leaves (such as rihani, basil) tied up with a strip of mkadi (the inner bark of the pandanus, also prized for its scent). These vikuba are hawked about by women in the streets of Mombasa and Lamu and eagerly bought.

page 353 note 1 i.e. a bird of prey.

page 354 note 1 i.e. waiting outside his house.

page 355 note 1 Zeitschrift für Kolonialsprachen, 1912-13.