Sukuma Labor Songs from Western Tanzania

Download or read book Sukuma Labor Songs from Western Tanzania written by Frank D. Gunderson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is an interpretive analysis of a collection of 335 song texts treated as primary historical sources. The collection highlights the cultural practices that link music with labor in Sukuma communities in northwestern Tanzania. These linkages are evident in the music of the elephant, snake, and porcupine hunting associations that flourished in the precolonial epoch, in the nineteenth-century regional and long-distance porter associations, and in the farmer associations that have proliferated since the beginning of the twentieth century. Acting primarily as an interpretive editor, the author collaborated with several Tanzanian scholars and translators towards fine-tuning the translation of these texts into English, and gathered testimonies in order to create succinct interpretive statements about the songs.