AWARDS
2000 OTTAWA UNDIE AWARDS: Favorite world artist and Favorite CD release
2000 TORONTO MUSIC AFRICA AWARDS: Best Album Release
2001 CANADIAN INDEPENDANT MUSIC AWARDS: Nominee for World Album of the Year. Check the website for Canadian Music Week
About Dunia Yote
Most of this music was recorded at a cottage on a frozen lake in the hills north of Ottawa. Each day some of us would come and some would go, each day there would be more to listen to as the songs took shape, and each day the March sun would grow a little warmer and melt a little more snow off the roof and porch. After a week you could sit outside in shirtsleeves on bare wood in the afternoon and think about maple sap beginning to run while inside the Tanzanian Von Trapp sisters sang to a New Orleans second line rhythm, a Trinidadian Scot twanged a berimbau over East African guitars and a Swahili vocal, or a Cajun/Oktoberfest accordion danced with its African partner. Listening back and looking out at the snow on Lac La Perdrix, we would remember that we were all, after all, Canadian. Come morning we would push whatever cars needed pushing out of the thawing Quebec mud, but we never let the weather measure distance from the heart of la terre Africaine.
About the languages: apart from French and English, there's a lot of Swahili, some Kinyarwanda (Urwibutso and parts of Nkuba) and a little Pulaar and Wolof (Minuit).
Newspaper articles about Dunia Yote
The Ottawa Citizen - Mar. 2000
Ottawa Xpress - Mar. 2000
The Toronto Star - May 2000
Edmonton Journal - June 2000
Edmonton Sun - June 2000
PIQUE NEWSmagazine, Whistler BC - July 2000
Lyrics & Song Descritpions
1. Dunia Yote (The Whole World)
The whole world, everyone, listen Children of
Africa, listen We don't want any more to see
Our children dying needlessly Our fathers fighting
needless wars Our mothers mourning for nothing
Our wisdom and traditions turned to nothing
Let's unite We'll beat the drums for you
Come Let's say goodbye to Europe and America
2. Travailler
An old French folk song hijacked by Alpha Blondy, who took it from Cote D'Ivoire to Jamaica and back. We borrowed it and let it loose at Lac La Perdrix.
3. Vive Lange / Katika
A praise song for friends and family, with some soukous celebration at the end.
4. Pinga Mundele
A tribute to heroes who fought white colonialist oppression. The melody is from a song by the Congolese singer Tshala Mwana.
5. Laissez La
A New Orleans Creole Rasta chant by way of Bujumbura and the Ottawa valley. Thanks to Owen Brown the Rasta Man for help with Nyabinghi drumming.
6. Grand-mere
Femme noir, O femme Africaine
Toi qui la premiere m'ouvra
Les yeux aux prodiges de la terre
Libre a jamais, O toi grand-mere
A song for my grandmother, Mother Africa and Mother Earth.
7. Nkuba (Thunder)
Kilimanjaro, make the rain fall
I want to speak with Thunder
Shango, make the rain fall
I want to go back home
In this traditional Rwandan story a young girl, Miseke, must overcome great obstacles to get back home. Her last and most formidable opponent is Thunder.
8. Urwibutso (Remembrance)
(for friends killed in the genocide in Rwanda)
Let me sing for the children I played with long ago:
Mao Setungi, we'll never gather again in front of your house
And Wili Kakontwe, son of Kayihura, how did you go?
Ruboneka the Lion, how you loved our country . . . your children saw you die for it
And our little brother, Jedeo, Leopold's son, he was just a child . . . even him?
And all you women who answered the call, you did not fail, never faltered
This song is for you . . .
Our cousin Mutesa, who made us laugh so, killed in the forest, there in Jari
Speak, Jari, what can you tell me about his death?
And you, Kavubi, son of Kabanda
There in my dreams is the field where we used to play.
All of you who gave yourselves for our country, look now
See how it blooms now, our country, reborn . . .
Brave people of Rwanda, I salute you.
9. Internalized Racism
A warning to all Africans: we must
never let Eurocentric values
brainwash us into denying our roots,
our culture, our blackness, our identity.
10. Minuit
A loose and informal late night take. We heard this Baaba Maal song on Jamaican guitar legend Ernest Ranglin's CD In Search Of The Lost Riddim.
