![]() |
Home |
Words: Joseph Kariuki (Kenya), Christopher Okigbo (Nigeria), Leopold Senghor (Senegal)
Its style is typical of me: a kind of free-ranging
dissonant tonality. The poems and the music cover the emotional field from
the tenderness of the first, to the aching loneliness of #2, to the
savage anger of the last. It requires a strong voice and equally strong
pianist, and these were found in Nigel Lemon, tenor, and Julie Quinn, piano,
personal friends who premiered the songs on my Master's
recital at the University of Alberta in 1975. The cycle had to wait a long time for another performance, and that was accomplished in 2021 by Luiz Gabriel De Melo Neto and Christopher Devine, who performed it wonderfully at my 75th birthday concert!
A few sample pages of each song may be had also by clicking above, and the full score is available through the Canadian Music Centre, or from myself by sending me an email (below). My only restriction is that you inform me of any performances so that I can keep this website up-to-date.
Duration: about 8 minutes
This song cycle is an afterthought following
completion of my Master's thesis composition, The Shrine of Kotje.
I had been working on that choral/orchestral piece with Malcolm Forsyth for
I am pleased to announce
that this song set was one of those
recommended in the Canadian Repertoire
section for singers wishing to participate
in the Vancouver International Music
Competition
2017
(I wish I knew if anyone chose it!)
several months, and during my research into African verse I had found more
poems than I could use in the larger work. So this set represents the
leftovers - poems that I loved but could not fit in.
![]() |