Maasai Footsteps

Anuang'a Fernando is a Kenyan dancer, choreographer, producer and music director who specialises in promoting and updating the traditional dances and songs of the Maasai people – and is constantly looking for new ways to do so. He worked with a dance group, The Rarewatts, who ‘mixed traditional Maasai dance with modern club moves,’ and he has toured with a 45-strong non-professional Maasai dance troupe, again mixing ancient and modern. Now comes an album, recorded with singers from three Maasai clans at different locations across Kenya – including Maasai Mara and Amboseli, which are well known to tourists for their game parks.

Maasai music has two parts – a rhythmic harmony chorus line and a melody. The chorus is constantly repeated, as if looped, so it sounds like a sturdy and sometimes hypnotic vocal riff. There are 19 tracks here, all a cappella, and once the opening section of whistling effects is over, they all follow much that same formula, whether on the pleasantly mesmeric wedding tune ‘Sukuroi’, the exuberant ‘Empurkoi’ or the cattle-raiding song ‘Olongishu’, where the rolling vocal riff sounds almost like a shanty.