Malawian Culture: The "Big Dance" and Lake of Stars

Immediately following our trip to Burkina Faso, we head off to Malawi for our first opportunity to work with CARE. Like we did with Burkina Faso last week, we want to explore the unique culture of Malawi. Nicknamed the “Warm Heart of Africa,” Malawi is known for its welcoming, friendly people and colorful, vibrant culture.

Ethnically diverse, Malawi is home to a number of unique cultures. The country’s largest tribe is Chewa, with a number of other related tribes calling Malawi home including the Yao, Tumbuka, Maravi and Nyanja, among others. Most of the tribes in Malawi are Bantu, a broader ethnicity, encompassing peoples who speak Bantu and one of the largest ethnic groups in Central and Southern Africa. Christianity is the most prevalent religion in Malawi, though most inhabitants follow a mix of Christianity and traditional tribal belief systems.

2018’s Lake of Stars Festival kicks off in just a few days on September 28th and will wrap up just as OMPT arrives in the country. Along with musical acts throughout the continent, bands and artists from around the globe perform at the Lake of Stars festival, including this year’s headliner Major Lazer. Other notable acts from this year and years past include:

Foals

Noisettes

The Maccabees

Dance is an important element of Malawi culture. Often religious or ceremonial in nature, masks are a common theme in traditional Malawian dance. Gule Wamakulu, translated literally as “The Big Dance,” is the most famous of the traditional Malawian dances. Gule Wamakulu is both a dance and a secret society among Malawian tribes, with the society and the men and women who are a part of the society called Nyau. The dance itself is ritualistic and is only performed during specific events: weddings, the death of a chieftain or installment of a new chieftan, the transition from boyhood to manhood and the funerals of important community leaders. Masks are worn during the dance in the shapes of beasts, believed to capture the spirits of the deceased.

Nyau

Nyau is a secret society among the Chewa people, Malawi’s largest tribal group, and are responsible for performing the Gule Wamakulu dance. The society was once banned by Christian missionaries though it survived and adapted, with some factions incorporating elements of Christianity into their ceremonies. Both men and women can join the society, though the initiation rights are different between genders, and the roles and rights of the society’s members vary according to gender and seniority. The earliest known evidence of the society, a cave painting of a Nyau mask in Zaire, dates back to 992 B.C., making the society nearly 3,000 years old.

Gule Wamakulu usually takes the form of a morality tale--dancers will perform as malevolent or, at the very least, morally questionable character archetypes representing forms of misbehavior to teach moral and social values. In 2005, UNESCO classified Gule Wamakulu as one of 90 “Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity,” a collection of culturally, historically or artistically significant, non-material components of culture recognized for their importance in an attempt to preserve them for future generations.

Another important part of Malawi culture is music, with most Malawian tribes have their own songs and dances. Commonly used instruments in tribal music include drums, mambrilira (similar to a xylophone) and a variety of rattles.

Along with the value placed on traditional, tribal music, Malawi also hosts a thriving, more modern music scene. Most notably, Malawi is home to the annual Lake of Stars Festival, one of the largest music festivals in Africa. Started in 2004 and held on the shores of Lake Malawi, Africa’s third largest lake, the festival averages 4,000 attendees with music acts from across Africa and Europe. Often considered one of Africa’s most important festivals, with CNN referring to it as one of the top seven festivals on the continent and being named one of the “World’s Best” in the Fest300 awards, the Lake of Stars Festival has exposed hundreds of millions of people from throughout the world to Malawi, its music and its culture.

As this is OMPT’s first time traveling to Malawi, we look forward to experiencing the diversity, uniqueness and friendliness of the Warm Heart of Africa firsthand.

•culled from www.illuminaid.org

The Legacy of Virginia's Maritime Music

Virginia is music’s home, in the mountains, yes, but also along the Atlantic Ocean, Chesapeake Bay and river banks.

There are other musical hotbeds: Nashville and Asheville, Austin, Muscle Shoals, Memphis and more. And, in Virginia nestles the heart of American song in the Blue Ridge Mountains, known widely through the famed 1930s Bristol recordings and the music of A.P. Carter, his African American collaborator, Lesley Riddle and the Carter Family. The music is often derived from Scotch and English ancestors as well as African slaves. Thus, the famed “Crooked Road” of Virginia’s mountain music has become a destination for tourists the world over.

But, there is also a “road” or trail to the music of Virginia’s coastal waterways similar to the “Crooked Road.” Only thing is, that watery trail hasn’t been widely recognized yet, laments Norfolk maritime troubadour Bob Zentz, an icon of folk, sea shanties and coastal music.

Bob Zentz playing an Anglo concertina, often associated with nautical music.

Zentz has spent most of his life trying to change that. “The folk who love to listen, play and perform Virginia’s ‘water music,’” he says, “are purveyors of a planet-wide musical movement. Learning from tradition, we discover who and where we are, creating a sound that is historical, musical, forward-looking, yet true to its roots and branches. The shanties—which are the work songs of the sea—as well as the maritime ballads and dance tunes and their pop and country derivatives, plot a course on a voyage from yesterday to tomorrow with occasional stops ashore, on the islands of time that we call home.”

For now, Zentz and fellow Virginian sea-going singer songwriter Mike Aiken have carved out their own niche within this watery mantra—a world stretching back from the shanties of seamen and glorious work songs of African American Menhaden fishermen on to the rocking seaside concerts of Norfolk’s Harborfest.

Singer-Songwriter Mike Aiken. Photo by Jeff Fasano.

As partners in music and in marriage, the Aikens harmonize with Amy performing vocals and percussion and Mike on vocals, guitars and mandolin. Photo by Tricia Duncan.

Mike Aiken's newest album, Wayward Troubadour, was released June 8.

A Grammy nominee, Aiken’s many songs about the boating life include one about sailing on the Chesapeake Bay selected by Sports Illustrated as one of the top 40 sport songs ever written. He has been a licensed U.S. Coast Guard captain. He and his wife and musical partner, Amy, have sailed extensively on the bay, coastal waterways and the Atlantic Ocean, departing from their berth at Rebel Marinain Norfolk’s Ocean View. They once got as far as the waters surrounding Cuba, where Mike, influenced by Hemingway, longed to go, but were stopped by authorities. The Aikens have sailed tens of thousands of offshore miles, making stops along the Canadian Maritimes and U.S. coast and in the Caribbean and Europe.

Love of life on the water is evidenced in Aiken’s popular “Summertime Song”:

Gonna’ fire up the boat and kick up a wake/

Gonna’ drown my troubles there in that lake

I've been waitin' for this day all winter long/

Soon I'll be livin’ in a summertime song

A summertime song/

Makes you wish that one day would last your whole life long

For over a decade the Aikens sponsored and performed in an annual music festival in Smithfield, in conjunction with Smithfield Little Theater called Aiken & Friends Fest, with a mission of youth music education and celebrating the songwriter. Starting in 2017 (and continuing in 2018), the event is now held in Branchburg, N.J. (Sept. 21–22).

The couple now divides their time between Norfolk and Nashville, where they recorded the newly released album, Wayward Troubador, his seventh studio album, featuring a stellar collection of Nashville talent. The record has a new Aiken nautical Virginia classic, “Chesapeake,” as well as the lovely land-based tune, “Nashville Skyline.”

Bob Zentz has been performing for more than 50 years. Besides guitar, he plays the autoharp, lute, melodeon, mouth harp, banjo, concertina and mandolin. He specializes in historical and maritime music and has a repertoire of more than 2,000 songs.

A longtime resident of Norfolk, having grown up near the Lafayette River, he has led programs along the Intracoastal Waterway for the nonprofit adventure learning and travel organization, Road Scholar (formerly Elderhostel). Love of life on the water is evidenced in Aiken’s popular “Summertime Song”:

Gonna’ fire up the boat and kick up a wake/

Gonna’ drown my troubles there in that lake

I've been waitin' for this day all winter long/

Soon I'll be livin’ in a summertime song

A summertime song/

Makes you wish that one day would last your whole life long

For over a decade the Aikens sponsored and performed in an annual music festival in Smithfield, in conjunction with Smithfield Little Theater called Aiken & Friends Fest, with a mission of youth music education and celebrating the songwriter. Starting in 2017 (and continuing in 2018), the event is now held in Branchburg, N.J. (Sept. 21–22).

The couple now divides their time between Norfolk and Nashville, where they recorded the newly released album, Wayward Troubador, his seventh studio album, featuring a stellar collection of Nashville talent. The record has a new Aiken nautical Virginia classic, “Chesapeake,” as well as the lovely land-based tune, “Nashville Skyline.”

Bob Zentz has been performing for more than 50 years. Besides guitar, he plays the autoharp, lute, melodeon, mouth harp, banjo, concertina and mandolin. He specializes in historical and maritime music and has a repertoire of more than 2,000 songs.

A longtime resident of Norfolk, having grown up near the Lafayette River, he has led programs along the Intracoastal Waterway for the nonprofit adventure learning and travel organization, Road Scholar (formerly Elderhostel) stuff. They’d toss one banjo to the other one and keep on going … They’d drop a hat out on the street, and people would give them money between ferries. Talking to one of their daughters, she said they made a living in the summer time going across on the ferries on Friday nights, just playing all night long and leaving a hat out to make a living. When I moved to Exmore, I remember them one time coming in my store with banjos and entertaining people, yes. Len and Sud Bell.” 

Bob Zentz’s song “Ol’ Sud Bell” recalls the talented and colorful Virginia coast musician:

Eastern Shore, Virginia, long time ago/

Out on Hog Island lived a man you should-a known/

Always wore suspenders, hip boots as well/

A voice like a barn door had Ol’ Sud Bell!/

Ol’ Sud Bell, Ol’ Sud Bell/

Sittin’ on the porch of the Wachapreague Hotel/

Pickin’ on the banjo, he played it rather well/

Gone but not forgotten, is Ol’ Sud Bell!

The Bells lived in Wachapreague when prohibition came/

A still in the attic was their claim to fame/

And down in the kitchen, two faucets in a line/

The cold ran cold and the hot ran ’shine/

At the Red Onion, in Broadwater town/

Sud played the banjo while the people danced around

Charlie Doughty bowed the fiddle for the square dance tunes  …”

Above right: Bob Zentz on Long Island, N.Y. in summer 1966. Photo by the late Steve Curcuru. Pictured here: Bob and Jeanne McDougall Zentz, Aug. 2016 on the deck of Peking, a four-masted ship that was departing for Hamburg, Germany. Photo by Chris Koldewey.

Along with paying homage to the history of our region’s tunes, Zentz does his part in continuing the tradition for current and future maritime music lovers by performing nautical music locally, including being a founder of several important folk music series.

“As a hub, home and harbor of maritime activity, the Hampton Roads area is a veritable sea chest full of venues and events,” Zentz says, “where on-deck and arm-chair mariners enjoy, experience and appreciate the music, yarns and legacy of our oceans, bays and rivers ... from dockside pubs and concerts to museums, aquariums, libraries and festivals.”

Locally, these include Norfolk’s nautically-based Harborfest, featuring major national and area musical acts, and pirate-themed festivals in Virginia Beach and Hampton featuring music of Virginia history’s nautical bad guys.

The NorFOLK Festival, founded by Brackish Water Jamboree and held at O’Connor Brewing Company in Norfolk, will be in its third year, providing maritime musical performances such as those of Zentz and his wife and musical partner, Jeanne McDougall Zentz, along with Shanty Grass, who specialize in sea shanties and traditional seafaring music.

“Our seas, bays and rivers weave a spell about our very lives, and to understand the ‘ways of the water,’ it is essential to understand the lives and times of those who have tried to tame, explore, navigate and harvest them,” Zentz says about our fascination with the songs of our coastal areas. “Virginia’s musical trail spans the mountains to the sea and back again in a never-ending story of song.”

•BY RON WRAY

•culled from www.coastalvirginiamag.com

Famadihana: Madagascar's Day of the Dead

It takes a village to celebrate the dead | © NH53 / Flickr

Every few years in the highlands of Madagascar, families reunite during a festival known as “Famadihana”, which literally means “the turning of the ancestors’ bodies”.

A typical family reunion doesn’t usually involve meeting your dead relatives. In Madagascar, however, an important celebration called Famadihana is a time for Malagasy people to spend time with their loved ones, both living and deceased. The Malagasy celebrate this event so that new family members can meet their ancestors and memories can be shared and never forgotten. This practice of secondary burial emerged in the 1820s after the repatriation of soldiers’ remains from far away. The festival also regained popularity during tomb transfers when tombs started to be rebuilt in stone with the introduction of the kiln.

A village in the highlands of Madagascar © Francesco Veronesi / Flickr

Organising Famadihana

Typically, relatives whose deceased ancestors share the same tomb will get together one year in advance to discuss the plans for the upcoming Famadihana. The family will discuss dates, expenses, and the guest list. During the ceremony neighbours and locals from all around are invited to share the Famahanana meal of rice and pork (or beef), also known as “varibemenaka”.

The responsibility falls on a local astrologer who establishes which exact dates between July and September Famadihana will fall over. Over these two or three days the family tombs can be opened. The first day is called “Fidirana”, or “the wrapping day”.

A tomb in southern Madagascar © Salym Fayad / Flickr

The day before the ceremony

Relatives and family members, many of whom haven’t seen each other since the last Famadihana, come together to introduce new members (mainly sons and daughters-in-law). For some, Famadihana is the only opportunity in which relatives can see their family. It is a celebration that strengthens family relationships as well as local networks.

Famadihana is a time when Malagasy children can meet their ancestors © Hery Zo Rakotondramanana / Flickr

The night is filled with discussion, music, drink and the preparation of the next day’s meal. The men of the family are in charge of killing the animals and preparing the meat. Offal is prepared and served with rice as dinner for family members but the lungs are reserved especially for the sons-in-law.

Dancing with the dead

When guests arrive for Famahanana they give rice and money to the organizers, or “tompon-draharaha”. The amount of the money and the quantity of rice is recorded in what is known as “atero ka alao”, literally meaning “to give something and receive it back”. This tradition ensures that when guests have to organise their own Famadihana, they will be repaid and supported in kind. Since expenses are shared, all the money and rice collected will be shared to everyone who has contributed to the expenses.

When all the guests have eaten the hosting family prepares the party to visit the tomb. As a celebration of life and parenthood, people wear their best outfits. A group of musicians playing trumpets, drums, and Malagasy flutes called “sodina” accompany the party and follow them from the village to the tomb.

Celebrating Famadihana © NH53 / Flickr

Once there, the bodies are removed and placed on reed mats. The host family wraps the bodies with new shrouds. At this point people can place something the person liked when he or she was alive in with the new sheets. For men, it may be cigarettes or alcohol. For women, perfumes or lipsticks. For children, people commonly place sweets. Now freshly wrapped, the direct relatives dance with the bodies and present them to the newcomers in the family.

The future of Famadihana

Over the last few years, the practice has been attracting criticism with many calling for it to be stopped. More and more people have abandoned this tradition with the belief that the practice goes against some religions. The festival is also increasingly more expensive to run, and some media outlets have also linked the spread of plague to Famadihana.

•By Domoina Ratsara

•culled from www.theculturetrip.com

Tuareg Festival in the Libyan Desert

A Tuareg man in the Libyan desert during the 19th Ghat Festival of Culture and Tourism, in Ghat, about 1,360km (845 miles) south of Tripoli December 28, 2013. In the annual event, Tuareg tribes from the region and tourists meet to celebrate Tuareg traditional culture, folklore and heritage. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

A Tuareg boy stands next to a camel in the desert during the 19th Ghat Festival of Culture and Tourism. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Camels graze in the desert during the 19th Ghat Festival of Culture and Tourism. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Tuareg men with their camels in the desert during the Ghat Festival. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Passing by in all their finery. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

A Tuareg band performs folkloric songs during the festival. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

A Murzuq band performs a popular song at the 19th Ghat Festival. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Colourfully dressed Murzuq band members mid-performance. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/ReutReuters

A Murzuq band member observes proceedings. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Folkloric song in the great outdoors. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Performing a traditional dance. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Circling for the traditional dance. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Dancing in line. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Preparing the tea in the bush. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Queens of the desert. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

A Tuareg band performs a traditional dance. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

A woman weaves a basket from palm fronds. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

A Tuareg man walks down the stairs in the alleys of the old city of Ghat. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Tuareg women rest in a tent. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

A Tuareg man stands in the desert. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

A Tuareg family outside their tent. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

A Tuareg couple in their tent. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

A Tuareg man and daughter in the desert. Photograph: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

•culled from www.irishtimes.com

Northern Roots Festival: Traditional Music by and for the Community

The small town of Brattleboro in southern Vermont is both home and host to all kinds of artists, and the annual Northern Roots Traditional Music Festival there has made its mark as a cornerstone in the traditional music scene. It returns to Jan. 25-26.

“Although it’s a small town, we have quite a large community of traditional musicians,” said Keith Murphy, director of the popular festival. From fiddle players to accordion players, “people are very active, but often traveling around performing and (don’t) always have an occasion to gather together.”

Murphy started the festival with Brattleboro Music Center 13 years ago and has been director since. But it’s not the kind of festival that takes anonymous applications. Everyone invited or involved is connected to the community in some way, from local musicians to nationally known acts with ties to the area.

“We bring them because of the community connection,” Murphy said. And his goal in choosing acts each year is to represent a wide range of traditional styles.

“Oftentimes people combine a lot of different styles and one part of the festival is wanting to showcase great players in very specific traditions,” he explained. The two-day festival includes performances, workshops, and even pub singing, and spotlights northern musical traditions including Irish, Scottish, English and French Canadian.

The acts are chosen to cover a lot of bases,” Murphy said.

It’s rare to see a showcase of so many different styles, and it also offers the musicians as well as the public a chance to participate in workshops with some of these great players.

“A lot of times the general public thinks this kind of music is one big amorphous thing – even Celtic music. Within Celtic music there’s a lot of important differences, dramatic differences,” Murphy explained. “One of the things the festival does in a very intimate setting is give people a chance to hear and appreciate those differences.”

Murphy himself is a guitarist and pianist from Newfoundland, Canada and will be playing alongside some of the musicians this year.

“People can be involved in the festival in a lot of different ways,” he said. “It’s great to come to as a listener, to hear great music in a really intimate setting. It’s a great festival for musicians of any level, any experience and tradition of music (for) great workshops. It’s a great event to be able to play music with other people who are also passionate about it.”

•By Janelle Faignant Arts Correspondent

•culled from www.rutlandherald.com

Liberia History, Language and Culture

Little is known for sure about this slice of West Africa prior to the 14th century. However, historians believe the indigenous population of Liberia are likely to have descended from migrants fleeing the Maliand Songhey Empires between the 13th and 16th century History of Liberia.

During this period, European traders established contact with coastal communities whose inhabitants became fluent in many languages. The slave trade both expanded this connection to the rest of the world and caused deep changes in legal and social structures within Liberia, draining the country of skilled, youthful people.

As resistance to the slave trade grew, a movement began in the USA called the American Colonisation Society (ACS), which sought to return African slaves back to their motherland. Critics say the ACS was borne out of fear that freed slaves would pose a threat to American society, but, nevertheless, the group established the colony of Liberia in 1822 and sent thousands of emancipated slaves there to start new lives.

Indigenous Liberians allowed the new arrivals to share their land, but were surprised when the settlers didn’t abide by the laws of the local chiefs. Scuffles ensued. So in 1847 the settlers, aided by the United States, formed a republic to reinforce their right to rule themselves and to defend themselves against a series of indigenous attacks.

Traditional and Western lifestyles coexist; however, traditional values, customs, and norms influence the Western type considerably. In cities both Western and African music and dancing styles are in vogue, but in rural areas traditional rhythms are favoured. Schools instruct students in the legends, traditions, songs, arts, and crafts of African culture, and the government promotes African culture through such agencies as the National Museum in Monrovia, the Tubman Center for African Culture in Robertsport, and the National Cultural Center in Kendeja, which exhibits architecture of the 16 ethnic groups of Liberia. Mask making is an artistic pursuit that is also related to the social structure of some ethnic groups. Music festivals, predominantly religious, are held in most communities. The University of Liberia has an arts and crafts centre. There are several libraries, including a children’s library in Monrovia and a National Public Library.

•culled from www.worldculture.com