Kingdom of.
Country in southern Africa. It has an area of 30,355 km2 and a population of 2·29 million (2000 estimate), 98% of whom are Basotho. Basotho music is stylistically similar to that of the other indigenous peoples of southern Africa, including the Xhosa, some of whom live in south-central Lesotho. The Basotho have strong historical, cultural and linguistic links with the Tswana of Botswana and the Sotho (Pedi) of South Africa’s Northern province, but corporate and geographical separation of these peoples since the 18th century have differentiated their musical styles, especially those connected with social identity, rituals of the life-cycle and economic pursuits.
Music is an integral part of Basotho social education and traditionally links hearing with the understanding of the natural and social worlds. The temporal arts (lipapali: ‘games’) of the Basotho are clearly separated from the graphic and plastic arts. Their four basic types include one connected with speaking (ho bua), two with (instrumental) sound-making (ho letsa) and one with singing (ho bina). The contemporary category of ‘music’ is called mmino (literally, ‘song’, from ho bina).
All these types of Basotho music are performed with specific objectives and derive their cultural significance more from the social contexts in which they occur than from their musical form or style. Many forms are found in more than one context; for example the mokorotlo and mohobelo dances, with a change of text, also provide the songs for communal work. In addition to these specific uses, many lipapali occur as forms of competition: this is especially so with the tunes called linong played on the lesiba stick zither, the mohobelo and mokhibo dances, school choir singing and the sefela songs of the migrant workers. These periodic competitions help to maintain the common musical traditions and at the same time define and maintain the social, regional and individual identities of performers and social groups.
There are two kinds of instrument: those sounded by the hand (liletsa tsa matsoho) and those sounded by the mouth (liletsa tsa molomo). Each group contains idiophones, chordophones and aerophones, but only those sounded by the hand include membranophones. All the instruments are played solo or in the accompaniment of songs, dances and other activities; ensemble performances rarely occur. While there is not a large variety of musical instruments, a wide range of game and topical songs can be performed on any one instrument, in addition to its characteristic songs. All the instruments have been described in detail by Percival Kirby (1934).
Hand-sounded instruments include both a single- and a double-headed drum, the moropa and the sekupu. Both drums are small, not more than 70 cm in length. The moropa is used to accompany girls’ initiation songs and women’s dancing, while the sekupu is used by certain healers. These healers (mathuela) use dance and song as an integral part of their therapy; historically most have been women. In addition, the sekupu is played to accompany an increasingly popular dance celebration, called litolobonya or pitiki, which is held for the mother of a newborn child and performed exclusively by and for groups of women who are mothers themselves (Coplan, 1994; Wells, 1994). Traditional hand-drumming has thus been almost exclusively a female activity. The hand-sounded group also includes the sevuvu (bullroarer), morutlhoana (shaken rattles), setjoli (rubbed rattles) and the manyenenyene (metal bells). The principal string instruments in this group are the two monochord musical bows: the thomo, which is beaten with a small stick and has a gourd resonator with a hole in the back that is stopped against the body; and the sekhankula or ‘mamokhorong, which is bowed with a small horsehair bow and which has a large, closed tin resonator at the upper end. A third important string instrument is the masholo-sholo, a bowed trough zither made of bamboo (Koole, 1952).
Mouth-sounded instruments include all that are blown, vocalized or mouth-resonated; mouth-resonance is an important feature in the Basotho classification of instruments and is regarded as a part of the instrument and not solely as a performing technique. These include aerophones (lekhitiane), megaphones (liphala), animal-horn trumpets (phalana) and flutes (lekolilo), chordophones (lekope and setolotolo, simple and compound mouth-resonated bows) and idiophones (sekebeku, a jew’s harp; and lesiba, a mouth-resonated stick zither sounded by blowing, on a feather quill affixed to one end of the single string). The lesiba was adapted from the Korana who call it gora (figs.1 and 2).
Basotho musical instruments are used with specific functional objectives, e.g. the primary use of the lesiba is in cattle-herding: birds’ sounds and actions are seen to affect cattle; these sounds can be imitated on the lesiba and the instrument used to control the animals’ behaviour.
Songs are divided into those that are performed standing still (ho engoe) and those involving coordinated movement and therefore ‘sung with the feet’ (ka maoto). The former are used in girls’ and boys’ initiation ceremonies. The education of boys for initiation (lebollo) consists to a considerable extent of likoma (secret instructional songs). The texts of these songs, which have a special linguistic structure, are of two types. There are myth-like historical songs that trace origins and migrations, cite hardships and punishments and establish the general continuity of the present with the past. Other song texts are concerned with customs, moral principles and with the dangers of life (Guma, 1967). Closely related, conceptually and musically, to the instructional songs are mangae, songs learnt by the initiates to be presented publicly upon their return from isolation. The texts of these songs are a combination of farewells to the past, self-praises and the construction of a poetic image of one’s identity and personality. As each initiate sings and recites praises, his fellow initiates respond in chorus, and the audience comes forward with gifts that mark their acceptance of the boy as a man. The instructional songs impress the significance of their ideas on the initiate, while he learns to express what he has absorbed through mangae.
Since the 1840s, the ‘standing still’ song type has also included religious hymns (sefela) of the Christian churches as well as the songs of spiritualist and prophetic churches. By the 1870s, the term sefela was further extended to refer to a form of lengthy sung poetry performed solo by Basotho workers employed in the new mines of South Africa (Coplan, 1988; 1994; Wells, 1994). The term sefela originally referred to solo verses sung by initiates during mangae initiation graduation songs, and the link with the song forms to which it has been applied appears to be emotional fervour (Coplan, 1987). Other songs in this group are lullabies, responsorial laments for the dead sung by women (koli ea malla), songs of school choirs (monyanyako), a responsorial prayer for rain (thapelo) and songs sung during the arrangements preceding a marriage.
Songs that involve coordinated actions include work-songs for threshing, tanning, grinding and hoeing. Herdboys sing mouse-hunting songs that praise mice and frighten them into being trapped and killed (Mokhali, c1970). Most work-songs are responsorial and iterative, with texts that refer to the tasks performed and the hardships they involve (Guma, 1967).
Songs that serve as the motive force in dramatic dances are central to this type. The mokhibo, a group dance, is performed by women who dance on their knees while gesturing with the upper half of the body. They are supported by a group of singers who encourage them and explain the dance through topical and mundane song texts. The songs, sung by both men and women, are polyphonic and responsorial and are accompanied by a single drum and hand-clapping. The mokorotlo (pl. mekorotlo) is a men’s dance associated with warfare, and its stamping gestures dramatize the strategy and tactics of battle; long responsorial songs describe the fate of men who fall. The dance is performed to highlight the special activities of chiefs, to accompany the ritual hunting of wild animals, during boys’ initiation, and in preparation for other dance performances. Mokorotlo performances are individualistic and competitive, and, like mangae, they are interspersed with praises. At country race meetings, mekorotlo are performed on horseback and individual mounts are praised. At harvest, village work teams sing mekorotlo as they cut and thresh, urged on by a solo praiser. Mohobelo is another men’s dance supported by responsorial songs and characterized by uniform movements of the dancers punctuated by solo dancing. As in the mokhibo women’s dance, these songs are topical and in combination with the dancing serve to maintain group cohesion and social solidarity. There were originally two basic styles of mohobelo, identified with the historical division between high chiefs of northern Lesotho (Ha-Molapo) and those of the south (Matsieng), that of the former being more energetic and faster in tempo than that of the latter; each style had its own corpus of songs. Just as popular with males of all ages is the ntlamo ‘stamping’ dance, adapted from a Zulu workers’ dance of the same name (ndhlamu) encountered in the South African mines. Ntlamo is but one of the many examples of choreological exchange among neighbouring southern African cultures that have occurred since well before European colonization.
There are few occasions when young men and women participate in the same dance. In one version of a dance called moqoqopelo or motjeko, boys and girls dance in a circle while one girl sings of her affection for a boy who responds by dancing (Mokhali, c1970). In another version, young men dance and respond with a short refrain to witty and amusing texts sung by a leader (Guma, 1967). Men and women participate equally in the possession dances of the mathuela healing cult, which was imported from Zulu-speaking regions to the south-east of Lesotho.
Traditionally there was no professionalism in Basotho music, though this has developed in response to changes in Basotho culture and as a result of the rise of patronage and a popular market. Broadcasting and commercial recording have also been changing Basotho music. The exposure of traditional styles to a wider mass audience and the influence of imported song styles and instruments have given rise to both syncretized and entirely new forms of musical expression, especially those of instrumental groups. The sefela songs of the migrants were taken up by both male and female tavern singers, put into the rhythmic, strophic form proper to instrumental backing by pedal organ or German concertina, and called famo after the dance they accompanied. Since the 1960s, these bar songs have been backed by duos comprised of piano accordion (koriana) and a new form of the meropa drum made from a 20-litre tar can, a rubber inner tube head and a row of manyenenyene (consisting of bottle tops), which is beaten with sticks or flexible lengths cut from bus tyres.
There have been extensive resultant changes in interpretation and losses among some of the more restricted and specialized types of music. Still, the music played and sung in the taverns and recorded on cassettes remains unmistakably Basotho in rhythm, melody and other musical characteristics. Other factors that have contributed to change include the market that has emerged for popular music played on Western instruments and new opportunities given to professional composers and performers.
In 1969 Huskisson listed over 40 Basotho composers whose works spanned the Western classical, Basotho traditional and current popular fields. One of these composers, the late J.P. Mohapeloa, published a collection of 92 choral partsongs in three volumes entitled Meloli le lithallere tsa Afrika (‘Melodies and decorated songs of Africa’, 1935–75). These are in Tonic Sol-fa notation, and they provided the first new Basotho school music since the hymnbook Lifela tsa Sione (‘Hymns of Zion’; see Huskisson, 1969) was published in 1844. Another collection of composed songs, which includes a few transcriptions of traditional children’s songs, is Binang ka thabo: lipina tsa Sesotho tsa likolo le lihlopha tsa libini (‘Sing with joy: Sesotho songs for schools and choirs’, 1963). While composition of part-songs arranged in Western harmonization has declined, new composers are now active, and the old songs of Mohapeloa and others are found in a multitude of modern performance contexts.
Recordings of Basotho music are held at the International Library of African Music, Grahamstown, South Africa. More easily available are the cassettes of koriana and meropa tavern songs recorded in studios in South Africa and now released internationally on a number of record labels.
E. Casalis: The Basutos, or Twenty-Three Years in South Africa (London, 1861)
W.A. Norton: ‘Sesuto Songs and Music’, South African Journal of Science, vi (1910), 314
W.A. Norton: ‘African Native Melodies’, South African Journal of Science, xii (1916), 619
N. Scully: ‘Native Tunes Heard and Collected in Basutoland’, Bantu Studies, v (1931), 247–51
P.R. Kirby: The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa (London, 1934, 2/1965)
J.P. Mohapeloa: Meloli le lithallere tsa Afrika [Melodies and decorated songs of Afrika] (Morija, Lesotho, 1935–75)
H. Ashton: The Basuto: a Social Study of Traditional and Modern Lesotho (London, 1952; rev., enlarged 2/1967)
A. Koole: ‘Report on an Inquiry into the Music and Instruments of the Basutos in Basutoland’, IMSCR V: Utrecht 1952, 263–70
H. Tracey: ‘Sotho Folk Music’, Basutoland Notes and Records, ii (1960), 37
H. Tracey: ‘Folk Music in Basutoland’, Basutoland Notes and Records, iii (1962), 26
Binang ka thabo: lipina tsa Sesotho tsa likolo le lihlopha tsa libini [‘Sing with joy: Sesotho songs for schools and choirs’] (Mazenod, Lesotho, 1963)
S.M. Guma: The Form, Content and Technique of Traditional Literature in Southern Sotho (Pretoria, 1967)
Y. Huskisson: The Bantu Composers of Southern Africa/Die Bantoe-komponiste van Suider-Afrika (Johannesburg, 1969)
A.G. Mokhali: Basotho Music and Dancing (Rome, c1970)
D. Coplan: ‘Eloquent Knowledge: Lesotho Migrants’ Songs and the Anthropology of Experience’, American Ethnologist, xiv (1987), 413–33
D. Coplan: ‘Musical Understanding: the Ethnoaesthetics of Migrant Workers’ Poetic Song in Lesotho’, EthM, xxxii (1988), 337–68
D. Coplan: In the Time of Cannibals: the Word Music of South Africa’s Basotho Migrants (Chicago, 1994)
R. Wells: An Introduction to the Music of the Basotho (Morija, Lesotho, 1994)
CHARLES R. ADAMS/DAVID B. COPLAN