Here is a playlist of songs from Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

Africa

African Trilogy

This is a synthesis of three South African songs.

Siyahamba is said to have been composed around 1950 by Andries van Tonder, a church elder. It was originally written in Afrikaans, but later translated into Zulu by Thabo Mkize. In 1978, the Swedish choral group Fjedur toured South Africa and their musical director, Anders Nyberg, returning after the tour, heard and recorded Siyahamba at a girls' school in Natal. In 1984, he arranged it for a Western four-voice setting and published it in a songbook and recording called Freedom is Coming: Songs of Protest and Praise from South Africa. In the 1990s, it started appearing in Catholic and other church hymn books under the title We Are Marching in the Light of God.

Shosholoza is a work song that was especially popular with the men whose work it was to lay railway lines. Meaning to push forward, endeavour or strive, it evokes a sense of pride, and these days is used as a rallying cry by sportsmen and women and their supporters.

Sikele Africa is the South African national anthem, sung here in English.

The African Trilogy has become a favourite with male choirs in particular.At our 2008 End of Season party at Helena May, the Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir did an impromptu performance of the trilogy between the main course and the dessert, beginning at the tables and ending up in choir formation out the front. My wife and a friend managed to capture most of the song on video, but because of the unplanned nature of the performance, could not get the beginning.

Mangwani Mpulele (Zulu)

This Zulu song was sung by Theodore Bikel, and also recorded by the KIngston Trio.

The words are very simple and repetitive, and may be translated as follows:

Mangwani Mpulele kinelwa kitula = Aunt, open the door for me, I am getting wet with rain.

Le haele mule, le haele mula kinelwa kitula = Whether it is here, whether it is there, I am getting wet with rain.

Here is me singing it.

Marching to Pretoria (Traditional / Josef Marais)

This Afrikaans song from the Boer war was translated into English by Josef Marais of the duo, Marais and Miranda.

Josef Marais writes in their collection "World Folk Songs" (1964):

In 1939 I introduced this song to American radio audiences over NBC's Blue Network. Pretoria, of course, was the important objective of the British during the Boer War of 1901, the last of the so-called "gentlemen's wars." As both sides sang it, there was no recognizable set way of performance. I wrote English verses and a definitive musical adaptation which, to my delight, has captured the enthusiasm of school and college students across the U.S.A.

I first heard it sung by The Weavers.

Here is my rendition of the song.

Israel

Hava Nagilah (A Z Idelsohn)

Abraham Zevi Idelsohn was the father of Jewish Musicology. Born in Latvia he went to Jerusalem early in the twentieth century to collect traditional music. He found this song, in the form of a wordless mystic chant, when he visited a group of Sadigura Hasidim in 1915.

After serving as a bandmaster in the Turkish Army during the first World War he went back to Jerusalem to lead a chorus in a victory concert. Needing a good crowd-pleasing number to end his concert, Idelsohn browsed through his file, and came upon this Sadigura Nigun he had collected. He arranged it in four parts, put some simple Hebrew lyrics to it, and performed it. Since then it has become the best-known best-known Jewish song in the world.

Some time after his death a man named Moshe Nathanson claimed authorship of the song. As he was a boy in one of Idelsohn's Hebrew classes at the time there may have been some truth in this, but Israel never accepted his claim.

Recordings of Havah Nagilah made in Europe in the 1920s are generally slower than it is played today, as the Hora rhythm we are familiar with today (from a Rumanian folkdance) was added later.

Here is my rendition.

תוכן המאמר:
ראשיתו של הזמר-היהודי-החילוני
שירי ארץ ישראל הראשונים
אידלסון - אבי המוסיקולוגיה העברית
זמר מזרחי - גלגולו של שיר
הזמר העברי בתל-אביב הקטנה
העלייה השלישית - שירי הומור ומצוקה
ראשית הזמר הישראלי
תנופת הזמר הישראלי
סיכום

תקציר: האם קיים זמר ישראלי? ימיו של הזמר הישראלי קצרים, החל משנות העשרים שרו שירי ארץ ישראל. בין המלחינים הידועים ששיריהם מושרים בפינו גם היום: יואל אנגל, מרדכי זעירא עמנואל עמירן וידידיה אדמון. השניים הראשונים היו הגשר בין מיני הזמר שהיו מושרים בארץ ישראל עד שנות העשרים לבין הזמר הישראלי החדש. השניים האחרונים הביאו רעיונות חדשים אודות מהותו של הזמר הישראלי, לחניהם היו דוגמא ומודל למלחינים רבים שפעלו אחריהם.