Song Lyrics & Tunes

[Waraba]

Hi, everyone. What should I do if I want to start learning the many, many, many songs (lyrics and melodies, with translations) that go with our rhythms?

[Waraba]

...anyone?

[Afoba]

Not so easy!
Go to Guinea (or Mali), to the villages, take someone who speaks french well and take him to some singers you like (or some drummers - sometimes the drummers know the songs better than some girls) to write it down and to translate directly.
You have to know that translating songs means not translating word by word but a lot of interpretation and careful questions (have you done any latin at school? d;-) ). It's not very easy to get the real or deeper meanings of some songs (through interpretation) and not to make them accept your first idea!
You can be in luck in the cities, too. But in general they will more often shiw you things that have been put on discs already instead of what they sing. Of course, this can be the same songs, what I want to say is, that it can happen there that you get information from discs more than from parties.

You should always check the songs with a drummer, too, because soemtimes the girls or women get confused about when it has to be sung. They will feel it during the fête, but (as we know from european or american drumming classes) singing and explaining for whites or the mini disc player can be totally different.

Last but not least you should be careful with the spelling. English and french speakers very often say and sing "dj" when there is none (in fact there is none in Kouroussa malinke, changes slowly towards Bamako, I think). Normally it's "dy" or "g". Little test: how do you spell the rhythm "dja"/"dya".
Same with djembé, which is a french or maybe bamana word. In Kouroussa malinke it's dyenbe ("djembe" or "gembe"). Germans do the same, because especially the exotist germans think that the world languages english and french are - well, world languages - and a better basic to spell most languages in the world (my theory in short d;-) ). This is wrong in general and catastrophic for malinke, where the german pronounciation is much closer (for example we can say "dya" and "Kankan").

Good luck and a lot of fun!
Daniel

[Waraba]

Daniel, you are right about going to Africa. But I am not getting back there any time soon. Also, with two small kids in the house, it's very hard to get to classes. I'm looking for Cliff's Notes. Or Madu's Notes...Or Toubab's Notes....???