Asili ya Mama: Tanzanian Women's Songs Preserve Cultural Heritage
Folk song collecting by women boasts both a rich history and a vibrant present, as demonstrated by a compelling set of ten energetic Tanzanian field recordings. Compiled by documentarian Ruth Ndeto and musician Msafiri Zawose, Asili ya Mama (Origin of Mother) highlights the rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic creativity of women from the Wagogo, Waluguru, and Wasambaa communities. These songs, which have "carried culture and music in everyday life," according to liner notes, are seldom heard beyond their local contexts, making this collection a significant archival effort.
Rhythmic Storytelling and Cultural Expression
The album opens with Baba Mwenda, a storytelling song that warns against greed, featuring a brisk female singer contrasted by the croak of passing birds. Other women join in unison, accompanied by traditional shakers and tin drums, creating a bubbling and playful defiance. Following this, the wedding song Chamsola is driven by the resonant ring of a mheme drum, with harmonies that shimmer opaquely like a midnight-blue sea. Chamwiloa, a fast-paced song about the formal union of families after marriage, races to its conclusion with intense percussion.
Recorded in courtyards, homes, and open village spaces, the call-and-response singing is infectious, enhanced by trilling vocal solos and blasts on the ngangafirimbi flute that serve as sparky punctuation. The themes of the songs are powerfully conveyed through performance. In Kuku Mnywa Maji, a song about love and companionship, voices and instruments are woven together in tight repetitions. Mlembwe, which explores understanding others' life experiences, builds deeper-pitched layers of harmony like foundational stones. The final track, Sunyunize, filled with shakers, also features women leading men, expressions now recorded, archived, and shared widely, extending their beautiful power.
Additional Folk Releases This Month
In other folk music news, Sam Grassie's debut album, Where Two Hawks Fly (Broadside Hacks), channels the ghost of Bert Jansch majestically, with Jansch's authority echoing in Grassie's gutsy delivery of songs like Burning of Auchindoun and his intricately arranged guitars. The woodwind in Orchy Falls and Kishor's sounds particularly spellbinding. Jim Moray marks 25 years in the trad folk business with his eighth album, Gallants (Managed Decline), where he dresses as a Whittlesea straw bear holding an electric guitar. His bold, bright voice shines on the Shetland song When I Was a Little Boy, driven by moody sub-bass and drums, and the Wilco-like swagger of American Stranger. Scottish clàrsach player and folk singer Anna McLuckie's The Little Winters (Hudson Records) offers ten bracing bolts of frosty light, with New Northern Lullaby (a McLuckie original) and The Dark Island (a twist on a composition by Scottish traditional musician Iain McLachlan) standing out as particularly spiky and sublime.
