The Osigili Maasai Warrior Troupe Comes to Wincanton
On 29th October 2011 Wincanton Parish Church was packed, with not a spare seat left, for a truly memorable performance by the Kenyan troupe, the Osigili Maasai Warriors, who gave us all an evening we will never forget. As one person said to me, "Fantastic - and really humbling."
The performances really were excellent. Unaccompanied singing, dancing, leaping and whistling, each the expression of an ancient and to us totally different culture and musical tradition and all performed with verve, feeling and precision. None of us of course could understand the Maasai language, but the self-confident and articulate young man who led them gave us excellent introductions in English so we could see what each song was getting at, be it the celebration of a lion hunt, a harvest procession, the ending of a time of cattle grazing, or a chorus for worship - for yes, they all claimed church membership. It seemed to me such music bites deep and seems to transcend culture and ordinary expectations. Perhaps we are hard-wired to feel it and be deeply moved - and as the response of the audience showed, we were.
The tours are organised by retired theatre director John Curtin, who heard about the troupe while working for a private school in Suffolk ten years ago. He told how he was introduced to them and asked if he could organise a UK tour. Immediately he realised that despite their lack of any conventional musical training, and that five of them are illiterate, they have a wonderful natural talent to express their musical tradition through moving, jumping, complex whistling and singing in harmony.
John explained that the troupe members leave their families for up to 13 weeks a year to tour the UK and raise money to improve life for their loved ones. Proceeds raised by the tours (this is the ninth) have allowed them to move out of their cow dung huts into corrugated iron houses with windows and to install two clean water points in their community, instead of having to walk five kilometres in each direction to collect water.
All the poorest children in the village now have UK sponsors allowing them to go to school, where they receive a cooked lunch. They also have solar lamps rather than toxic kerosene.
John added: "These tours really have changed the lives of the villagers to a great extent." In fact one English donor has been so impressed he has donated enough for a whole new school to be built for their community.
Their friendliness, dignity and the way they interacted with the audience, getting young and older to take part, made quite an impact as did their jewellery and the beadwork they had for sale. Many queued up to be photographed with them. During the interval they also met a Kenyan couple who had driven down specially from Aldershot. He is in the British Army fresh back from a tour of Afghanistan and his wife is herself Maasai. In addition the pupils of Wincanton Primary School had all produced life-sized replicas of Maasai warriors which were attached to the pillars of the Church. The troupe was so taken by them that they asked if they could take them back to Kenya to show their children.
The Maasai are a semi-nomadic people from Kenya and northern Tanzania. Maasai music traditionally consists of rhythms provided by a chorus of vocalists singing harmonies while a song leader, or olaranyani, sings the melody.
The Osiligi Maasai Warrior Troupe is from a community called the Oliopolos, which is spread over about 30 square miles. Maasai jump to express happiness. They also jump competitively to impress women, who don't jump but hold up their sticks and the higher they are pointed the more attractive the young man is considered to be.
To see more about them visit http://www.osiligiwarriors.co.uk/
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Reply #1 on : Thu November 10, 2011, 12:23:30
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