Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/Stubs/Traditional Music of Malawi

Traditional music of Malawi includes many dances unique to different cultures.

Examples

Tchopa dance

This is a sacrificial dance practised and performed by communities in the southern parts of Malawi especially among the Lhomwes. The Tchopa dance is usually performed during celebrations after good harvests and successful hunting outings and during offerings to ancestral spirits after calamities such as droughts and outbreaks of disease.

INGOMA

Ingoma is a very famous dance among the NGONI of Mzimba and Mchinji Districts. Like Ngoma of Ntcheu and Dedza Districts, it was originally a war dance performed after a successful battle. The men in Ingoma are elaborately decorated. Their costume includes a headgear made of feathers, ornaments worn on the limbs, a network of beads wrapped across the chest and stomach, and around the neck hang various types of animal skin. They carry a spear or club and a shield. The women wear ordinary 'Chilundu' (a piece of cloth) from the waist downwards, and a blouse and a head gear called 'DUKU'. In the Ingoma dance, men dance in straight lines while women form lines on the side of the men. Men sing and stamp their feet, wielding their shields, spears and clubs by symbolising a war scene while the women sing, clap and ulutate in unison with the men's dance performance.

Malipenga Dance

The Malipenga dance owes its origins to the system of military parades introduced to Nyasaland in colonial times by the British officers of the King's African Rifles.

Mganda

Like other dances, Mganda is common among the Chewa tribe of central Malawi. This is probably the second most popular dance after Gule wa Mkulu (Big dance) among the Chewa. It is practiced mostly in such districts as Dowa, Lilongwe, Ntchisi, Dedza and Kasungu, and is primarily an entertainment dance performed during wedding ceremonies. The dancers are usually in a group of 6 to 10, sometimes more with a drummer in front of the dancers. Men who form two or three lines facing the same direction perform it but, as they dance, they systematically face all directions. The dancers hold small flags and a ‘badza’ (made from a gourd). During wedding ceremony performance, entertained viewers throw money to the most entertaining dancer. After a performance, the group is awarded/paid for the performance. Apart from entertainment alone, the dance is a source of income for the members.

Literature

• LP record Donald Kachamba's Kwela Band 1978, Austromechana Wiesen: Jazz Pub Wiesen.

• CD record Concert Kwela: Donald Kachamba et son ensemble en concert, production et enregistrement: Herman Vuylsteke A Gand, Juin 1991, Le Chant du Monde LDX 274 972, Paris 1994.

• Kubik, Gerhard 1982 Ostafrika: Musikgeschichte in Bildern, Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag for Musik.

• Kubik, Gerhard, assisted by Moya Aliya Malamusi, Lidiya Malamusi & Donald Kachamba. 1987 Malawian music: a framework for analysis, Ed. Mitchel Strumpf, publ. jointly by Centre for Social Research and Dept. of Fine and Performing Arts, Univ. of Malawi, Zomba. Limbe: Montfort Press.

• Kubik, Gerhard & Moya Aliya Malamusi 1989 Opeka nyimbo: musician composers from southern Mala ,ri, 2 LP stereo records with booklet, Museum Collection Berlin, MC15, Berlin: Museum for Volkerkunde.

• Malamusi, Moya Aliya 1990 "Nthano chantfables and songs performed by the bangwe player Chitenje Tambala", in Rosalie Finlayson, ed.: African language and music: contributions in honour of David Kenneth Rycroft (School of Oriental and African Studies, London), Special number of South African Journal of African Languages, 10/4, Pretoria, African Language Assoc. of Southern Africa, pp. 222-38.

• (1994) "Rise and development of a Chileka guitar style in the 1950s", MS submitted for publication at Univ. of Vienna, Institute for Musicology.

• Tracey, Hugh 1950 "Recording tour 1949", African Music Society Newsletter, 1/3,July, pp. 33-7.

• 1959 "Report on the ILAM Nyasaland recording tour (7th May to 30th June 1958)", African Music, 2/1.

• 1973 Catalogue of the 'Sound of Africa' series, 210 LP records of music and songs from Central, Eastern and Southern Africa by Hugh Tracey, 2 vols., Roodepoort: International Library of African Musi

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