"Ah one, and ah two, and ah…”
Posted on 04/28/2022 11:45:12 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Rivalry between stars of a unique accordion-based style of music in the southern African kingdom of Lesotho has sparked years of deadly gang warfare that has turned the tiny country into the murder capital of the continent.
"Maybe I've survived because I'm a woman," Puseletso Seema says quietly, her whisper a shadow of the powerful voice that once entranced thousands of fans in beer-halls and stadiums across southern Africa and beyond.
Acclaimed as the Queen of Famo, the popular national music of Lesotho, she sits on a scuffed sofa in her tiny, bare, cement-block home, with little to show for her years of success.
"Everyone wants to show off their manhood by owning a gun," she says.
Famo has the gentlest of origins. It developed when traditional "wayfarers' hymns" - a form of spontaneous oral poetry, or rap, composed by herders or travellers to while away long hours guarding cattle or journeying on foot through Lesotho's mountains - began to be accompanied first on the concertina, and later the accordion.
But in 2004, after one Famo musician allegedly shot another, a cycle of revenge developed, fuelled by poisonous lyrics in songs. And over the last two decades scores of Famo artists and hundreds of other people connected with the music - producers, fans, DJs, musicians' family members - have been gunned down.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
He was a great general, but wars do not great make you.
So it’s rappers with accordions. And we thought it was bad here.
I wonder what a band would sound like if it consisted of only accordions, bagpipes and banjos...lol
"Ah one, and ah two, and ah…”
“Imagine the mayhem if this crosses borders and spills over into Scottish Bagpipes.”
Funniest thing I’ve read all day.
“For a bit less fraught rivalry, between Zydeco immortals Boozoo Chavis and Beau Jocque, go find the documentary “The Kingdom of Zydeco.”
If anybody can make good accordian music, it’s American black people.
the Honner’s against the Beltuna’s... right???
Accordions I can abide.
A banjo can cause a violent reaction in me after playing about 15 minutes.
“Everyone wants to show off their manhood by owning a gun,”
And in the olden days they did the same with Assegais and knobkerries.
But who wants to use 1880 weapons in the modern world!
Puseletso Seema Ngoetsi (adult content)
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