Kyaso

Ngoma (a Swahili word which literally means ‘drum’) are happenings during which music, dance and song act together to realize performances related to the most important rites of the Swahili communities’ cycle of social life. All the ngoma performances reproduced here are ‘planned performances’ which means that they were not recorded during the rituals to which they belong. They were recorded in order to complete a PhD research which was based on contemporary times.The Verba Africana series publishes video recording of African verbal arts on CDRom's, DVD’s and the Internet. This series responds to the increasing need for new electronic tools that integrate the written and audio-visual materials for research, teaching and learning of African languages and oral literatures. The video recording of oral genres, such as poems, songs and tales, is integrated into the presentation of relevant aspects (language, form, content, performance, literary, social and historical context). The videos and the accompanying material (short information and full articles) allow researchers and the interested public to approach oral literary productions as ‘total event’.NWO, The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Researc