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:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yN1yCjJQLg
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)
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