African Folktales at Internet Archive: The Lion on the Path

Music is an incredibly important part of African storytelling traditions, and many folktales often contain songs as part of the story. Today's book is a collection of folktales from southern Africa as collected by Hugh Tracey, with the music transcribed as part of the stories! Here's the book, just a click away at Internet Archive: The Lion on the Path and Other African Stories.

Here's what the book looks like inside with the story, the song, and illustrations also. This is for the story of The Girl and the Crocodile (click on the image for a larger view).

You can read about Hugh Tracey's decades-long study of the music and dances of southern Africa at Wikipedia. If you are familiar with the kalimba, that is thanks to Hugh Tracey's efforts to popularize the instrument (I have one, and it is really fun to play!); more about Tracey and the kalimba, and for a folktale about the mbira, see this previous post: Stories of Africa by Gcina Mhlophe. 

Here's a picture of Hugh Tracey in a recording session, and you can read more about his work in music preservation here: My Story of Hugh Tracey (at Kalimba Magic).

The Internet Archive has an album of traditional music from eastern Africa produced by Hugh Tracey together with Alan Lomax from 1955: British East Africa.

In this video you can learn about the traditional mbira with Anand Prahlad, a folklore professor at the University of Missouri (author of a beautiful book: African-American Proverbs in Context, which is also available at the Internet Archive).

Instruments like the mbira are popular in eastern African too; here is a wonderful video recording of a musician from Uganda, Kinobe:

So, enjoy both the stories and the songs here in Hugh Tracey's book, just a click away at the Internet Archive:

The Lion on the Path and Other African Stories