It was a dark and windy night in Ewauso. A chill shrouded us as the wind kicked up the red sand of the great expanse. The Americans huddled in their sweatshirts and fleeces zipped up to their noses while the Kenyans pulled their Masaai plaid shawls and colorful kangas tightly around their shoulders to ward off the wind. We stood in groups around the compound, saying our goodbyes, as we would leave in a caravan of jeeps in the morning to relocate to Nairobi for the rest of our stay. During a lull in the conversations, our primary translator stood before the group and announced that the people of Ewauso had arranged a going-away gift for us - a song.
A group of ten adults from the village stepped forward and stood before us in a line, shoulder-to-shoulder. Slowly they began to rock back and forth, pushing their torsos forward and bending their knees while leaning back slightly on their heels before straightening up again. Our translator, Given, stood in the center of the line. He, as the olarayani, or song leader, began to sing low in a rich and deep voice. He sang alone in Kiswahili for about ten seconds, his voice enveloping the silence of the wide-open plain. The wind carried his voice through the night and swirled it around the compound, cloaking us as a community. Without hesitation, those surrounding him joined in his song, a repetition of one, ten-second long phrase. The women’s voices soared above the others, giving the song a sense of hope and love that had been missing in Given’s lonely solo. All the tones weaved together effortlessly, simultaneously raw from the purity of a capella human voice and harmonious in unison.
The singers continued with this call-and-response rhythm throughout the entirety of the song, although as it played out, Given’s voice was never left alone again. During his solos, the rest of the group rumbled softly with low rhythmic throat signing and humming. At times I distinguished some of the women gently chanting lullabies I heard throughout my time in Ewauso while Given sang out the call.
Although I couldn’t understand more than one word in the entire incantation, I began to recognize the recurring phrases as the song went on. The “chorus” seemed to be a bass-like chant of “a-hey, ah-hey-ya.” After repeating this phrase several times, Given would call out in a definitive voice, rising above the others in both pitch and volume while they repeated the chorus several more times until he finished his verse. The song, unlike the spoken language, incorporated lively intonation, including fluctuations and inflections to distinguish words or phrases along with pitch accents and marked tones. Occasionally I caught the English word “Jerusalem,” leading me to believe the singers were weaving us a tale reminiscent of their rich Biblical background and blessing us on our journey with their song.
The sounds seemed to move within me more than just around me, raising a sense of pure gratitude and love for the mass of humanity inhabiting the world in the pit of my stomach. After all, if these people thousands of miles away from my home in a secluded tribal town nestled in the middle of the great Kenyan desert could care enough about us, a group of young American students, to share the core of their culture and their one infallible tradition of hope and delight, then surely the world was a beautiful place. I breathed in deeply and filled my lungs with the crisp night air and swirling Kiswahili alike, nourished by the rich combination of physically essential oxygen and equally vital culture and community.
After nearly five minutes, the pattern that had lulled us all into a satisfied sense of amazement shifted as the singers prepared for the conclusion. A few of the women broke out of their repeated range and sang an octave lower than usual, harmonizing the entire verse. For the concluding stanza, they all sang in a relatively similar key, unifying their voices into one vast and powerful voice. To end the performance, Given turned forty-five degrees so his right side faced us and began to walk forward, maintaining his rocking motion. The singers fell into place behind him as he slowly passed each one of them, as if they were exiting a stage. And then the song ended as abruptly as it began, with no crescendo, no lasting note, no flourishes. In one voice, the Masai singers articulated their final, curt note. And then, just as swiftly, the singers were among us, mingling once again.
After I recovered from the pure awe of such a touching cultural experience, I thought about how their bodies and voices coincided. For the Masai, song and dance is an integral part of life, and is often a central form of expression. Their rocking movements, seemed, to me, to be a fully-embodied wave, an enthusiastic send-off at its finest. Their voices, so strong and forceful, drove their message of good will home. And they relayed all of this and more through their most valued forms of expression: song and dance.
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