Miriam Makeba - The Click Song (Qongqothwane - Marriage Song)

Oh, isn’t this exciting! It’s a marriage song from the Xhosa people of South Africa. I just couldn’t resist posting this for this week’s song translation. As always, click CC in the video to view your subtitle options. Note: Xhosa is a CLICK language. Those beats you hear in the song are in fact vocal clicks. And there are A LOT of them. Occasionally there are claps also, but you’ll be able to tell the difference. If you are reading along with the Xhosa lyrics, each x, c, and q represent one of three distinct click types. Xhosa is also tonal, like Chinese. Qongqothwane is a song about where the village’s witch doctor can be found. This is important because it is the witch doctor who gives good blessings and advice for the future to the Xhosa’s newlyweds. But this witch doctor looks just like a normal person, not like what most people think of when they imagine a witch doctor — strange hair, charms, and all that. So sometimes, he can be hard to find since he looks like everyone else. He is compared to a “knocking beetle,” a type of beetle that makes an abrasive sound when it strikes its abdomen against the ground. Children play with these beetles, and they are said to lead the way home. In a way, the witch doctor is very like the beetle, as he leads the newlywed couple to a new future together in the same way that the beetle leads children home to where they belong.