This is a children’s song in Swahili from the African country Ghana. In its original version, it is similar to “Head, Shoulders, Knees, & Toes”: there are movements that you do when you sing the song, such as touching head, shoulders, waist, knees and ankles. The song works according to the principle of ‘call and response’, it is usually sung in circles.
We modified the ritual a bit, still using it as a “call and response song”, but not limiting the movements to touching certain body parts. The leader chants a line in a certain manner and then everyone repeats it, trying to imitate the tone, the volume, the pace, etc. The exercise can be used for different purposes, for warming up the body and voice, interconnection, getting into different emotions states …
Instruction:
Someone takes on the role of improviser, the person who ‘sings on’, the others answer by repeating the words. The person who ‘sings on’ is completely free to interpret the song, as are the rest of us who repeat. So the rest of us can repeat or find our own expression in what was suggested. As one of the basic principles of the Theater of The Oppressed says, the expression of an individual cannot be ‘wrong’. Anyone in the circle can al
ternately take on the role of improviser.
From the clips available on the Internet, this is one of the ways that is close to how we performed the exercise in the project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UccSgT3BXJA.
The text is as follows:
Che che kule
Che kofi sa
Kofi nsa langa
Kaka shi langa
Kum aden nde
Kum aden nde.