Hello everybody on Hive and especially the Hive Open Mic Community! My name is Jasper and I'm writing (and singing) to you from Cape Town South Africa!
This is Week 127 of the Hive Open Mic Challenge, and the theme for the week is "Tevazu"! According to Google Translate, this is the Turkish word to describe "Humility / Humbleness / Modesty".
I think I have the perfect song for this. It is about an old South African lady who has lost everything, but because of her humility and inner strength, she doesn't fall apart and can keep on going.
The band I am covering is a wonderful South African band I have mentioned before called Juluka, which was formed in the middle of Apartheid (forced racial segregation era in South Africa) where a white man called Johnny Clegg became an "honourary Zulu" and formed this band that played a mixture of Western and Zulu musical styles and became a symbol against Apartheid.
Please see the original version here, as well as the lyrics, and a rough translation of the isiZulu chorus:
Lyrics
An old lady walking down the dusty farm road
Looking for a simple home
She doesn't want anything extremely smart
And she doesn't need a telephone
She's the child of a refugee running from the zulu war
Living from hand to mouth, dodging the wrong arm of the law
She's old and she's bent, her eyes can hardly see
And she's going home forever to weenen county
Uhamba njalo wemashabala (You are always on the move Mama Shabalala)
Ukhumbula ku-phi? (Do you remember where?)
Uhamba njalo wemashabala (You are always on the move Mama Shabalala)
Ukhumbula ku-phi wena? (Do you remember where you are?)
Ukhumbula ku-phi wena? (Do you remember where you are?)
Uthwala 'nzima wemashabalala (You carry it hard Mama Shabalala)
Iya-phi indlela? (Where does the road go?)
Uthwala 'nzima wemashabalala (You carry it hard Mama Shabalala)
Izinto zomhlaba (The things of the world)
Izinto zomhlaba (The things of the world)
She's built more homes than fingers on her hands
A sharecropper's wife living on county crown land
And then they wrested the harvest from the land and it's lords
And when her man died she could cry no more tears
And she had lost everything that she ever had to lose
So she picks up her walking stick and puts on her car-tyre shoes
And she's walking in a dream listening for that special sound
The echo of the plough whip over weenen county ground
"Weenen county you took my man" she says
"You took my home, you took my land
You left me all alone - now I'm coming home."
Weenen county in the springtime
Hadeda's on the wing (A hadeda ibis is a type of large bird here in South Africa)
Blue morning
Blue morning
Uhamba njalo wemashabala (You are always on the move Mama Shabalala)
Ukhumbula ku-phi? (Do you remember where?)
Uhamba njalo wemashabala (You are always on the move Mama Shabalala)
Ukhumbula ku-phi wena? (Do you remember where you are?)
Ukhumbula ku-phi wena? (Do you remember where you are?)
Uthwala 'nzima wemashabalala (You carry it hard Mama Shabalala)
Iya-phi indlela? (Where does the road go?)
Uthwala 'nzima wemashabalala (You carry it hard Mama Shabalala)
Izinto zomhlaba (The things of the world)
Izinto zomhlaba (The things of the world)
▶️ 3Speak
