We Tell Our Old Songs

This book and its accompanying CD are a remarkable record of San music, ancient and modern, as performed by the!Xun community at Schmidtsdrift in the Northern Cape, a group of people who have found their way from southern Angola via northern Namibia to South Africa within the last few decades. Their art has already been documented and showcased in the work My Eland's Heart by Marlene Winberg. Kulimatji Nge now presents another aspect of their culture - the San people's extraordinary, and mostly unknown, music. The book (with CD) focuses on three types of music associated with three particular personalities within the community: Pensa Limunga, a storyteller and hunter; Likua Kambembe, a musician and community leader; and Meneputo Mununga, a shaman and traditional doctor. These elders still remember the traditional ways of life, the stories and songs that formed part of everyday living in southern Angola and northern Namibia. The CD includes recordings of their songs and story narratives spoken in the ancient!Xun language. These oral histories speak about many things: the meaning and making of fire; how they shoot and track the eland and its spiritual potency; how knowledge is passed on through songs and dances. There are songs about deserts and dry worlds and the meaning of water; songs about animals such as the spring hare, hippopotamus, horse and lion; stories about the moon; legends about!Xangu, the water snake; accounts of shamanic healing rites such as the trance dance; information about traditional foods and medicine; lullabies and laments