Songs and dances in Zambia: men’s music

Songs and dances in Zambia: men’s music. Men’s music consists of songs connected to the old cults and social dance songs.
They can be work or leisure songs sung in the village shelter (nsaka), see Get-togethers of men. Repertoires differed from person to person, and according to the age of the player. The quantity of grief in the song texts increased with age.

Songs and dances in Zambia: men’s music. The songs can be accompanied by the men’s instruments: the musical bow, the board zither, the lamellophones or the banjo. In general, the repertoire consists of arrangements (kusambilila: try to learn, learn by trying) of social dance songs and of cinsengwe. The repertoire also differs for each of these instruments. On the, now obsolete, musical bow mainly hunting and mourning songs were played (in the 1980s), on the board zither and the lamellophones all kinds of songs including social dance songs and on the banjo kalindula and lumba.
More songs within one musango are often linked together, so that song texts can have considerable length, with a change of subject every two or four lines. See for examples the texts of Song 88 and Song 36.
In the course of the 1990s, christian songs began to replace most of the songs connected to the old cults.