AFRICA - Kenya & Tanzania Witchcraft & Ritual Music

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Kenya & Tanzania Witchcraft & Ritual Music



David Fanshawe traveled to Kenya and Tanzania to record indigenous music.

Witchcraft & Ritual Music is the culmination of his work. This CD

consists of sixteen tracks. All but one is recorded in Kenya.



The recordings are amazingly crisp and clear given the year they were

recorded and the fact that these recordings were made in local settings

and not in a recording studio. I feel the recordings were very successful.

David managed to capture the music authentically. In his liner notes

he says, "...I have tried to capture the spirit of a musical heritage

now nearly extinct. The music on this album comes from a part of East

Africa whose musical traditions remain largely unknown to the rest of

the world. Particularly fascinating is the manner in which music and

medicine are combined in the indigenous practice of witchcraft; music

takes on the power of medicine, and medicine becomes associated with

the healing sound ofdrums, interwoven with beautiful threads of melody."The tracks are music from various healing ceremonies, initiation rites,

weddings, funerals, and folk music. Many of these traditions have gone

by the wayside as western culture has crept in.



The first song is Ngoma ra mrongo performed by members of the Taita tribe.

You can hear in the background a chorus of people singing. In the

foreground is a woman shouting and at the end of this clip you hear a

whistle along with drums and rattles. Listen...



One track is actually two songs. The Tuken Moral Songs are performed

by two of the few traditonal singer left in Kenya. In this song you

can heard their voices and a single instrument, the kibugantit.



Many of these songs were performed with local, indigenous, instruments

with the occasional western one creeping in. You can hear whistles in

some of the tracks.



One instrument is a chepkombis which is a bowl or pot with a skin stretched

over it. A stick is placed on top of it vertically. The musician rubs

his/her hands up and down the stick to prdouce some very eery sounds.



Other instruments are kayamba (rattles), ankle-bells, flutes, cow bells,

uta (1-stringed harp), kibugantit (a 6-stringed harp), nyatiti

(an 8-stringed harp), lukuji (a mouth harp), bung'o horn, and of course drums.



My only criticism about this CD is the title. There is only one track recorded

in Tanzania. The CD title is Kenya & Tanzania which leads one to believe that

roughly half the tracks are recorded in Kenya and the other half in Tanzania.

This CD should have been titled Kenya: Witchcraft & Ritual Music leaving off

the one track recorded in Tanzania.