110 african appropriations
calculations climaxed in 1844. In light of present-day apocalyptic belief,
it is perhaps no coincidence that the Nyasho choir recorded its tape in
- As early as the 1960s, important Tanzanian church leaders referred
to a belief about the near termination of history that, according to the
late-nineteenth-century writings of the church’s founding prophet, El-
len G. W hite, was believed to last for only 6,000 years. Writing in 1972,
one of Tanzania’s church leaders made his own calculations and expected
the year 2000 to mark the end of history. As the year came closer, quite
a number of Tanzanian Adventists believed that all those who until then
had not “accepted the Sabbath” would “receive the mark of the beast”
(Höschele 2007: 447–448).
During our conversation at the church, one member of the choir said
he believed that there was something special about the “Titanic” song. He
had noticed that wherever the choir performed, the audience’s attentive-
ness would be most intense while listening to this particular song, but he
could not explain why. I suggest the explanation for the audience’s reac-
t ion is mu lt i faceted. Fi rst of a l l, t he song tel ls a stor y. Th is set s it apa r t f rom
many other kwaya songs, whose lyrics are built around standard phrases in
praise of the lord and other Biblical figures (cf. Barz 2003). Moreover, the
story is dramatic. The listener’s curiosity is piqued from the opening verse,
which suggests that the tale to be related will not end happily. Listeners are
thus keen to find out how a “ journey [that] started happily” turns tragic. In
addition, the lyrics are dramatized through a very skillful musical arrange-
ment. Its overall pattern is the alternation of voice types across verses,
so that female and high-pitched male voices combine to sing one verse,
male bass voices the next, and so on. The first two verses sung by the bass
voices are accompanied by higher, humming female voices. This gives the
song a joyful, light-hearted timbre. The ship is built and leaves Europe for
America in expectation of a happy voyage. The verses that follow build up
suspense. This is achieved through switching the alternation of the voice
types into a call-and-response pattern, in which verses sung by the bass
voices (“All the passengers were happy and hoped to arrive.. .”) are com-
pleted by the chorus of the high and middle voices (“... Safely”). The
song’s climax is marked by a dramatic slow-down in tempo: “W hen they
saw that ahead of them was danger / The captain and the passengers were
not bothered / They said: the T-i-t-a-n-i-c [pause] / C-a-n-n-o-t s-i-n-k.”