Kamba People - Kikamba Music

Kikamba Music

The Akamba people's love of music and dance is evidenced in their spectacular performances at many events in their daily lives or on occasions of regional and national importance. In their dances they display agility and athletic skills as they perform acrobatics and body movements. The Akamba dance techniques and style resemble those of the Batutsi of Rwanda-Burundi and the Aembu of Kenya.

The following are some of the varieties of traditional dance styles of the Akamba community:

• Mwali (pl: Myali) which is a dance accompanying a song, the latter which is usually made to criticize anti-social behaviour.
• Kilumi and Ngoma, religious dances, performed at healing and rain-making ceremonies;
• Mwilu is a circumcision dance;
• Mbalya, or Ngutha is a dance for young people who meet to entertain themselves after the day's chores are done.
• Kamandiko', or the modern disco usually held after a wedding party.

Dances are usually accompanied by songs composed for the occasion (marriage, birth, nationally important occasion), and reflect the traditional structure of the Kikamba song, sung on a pentatonic scale. The singing is lively and tuneful. Songs are composed satirizing deviant behavior, anti-social activity, etc. The Akamba have famous work songs, such as 'Ngulu Mwelela', sung while work, such as digging, is going on. Herdsmen and boys have different songs, as do young people and old. During the Mbalya dances the dance leader will compose love songs and satirical numbers, to tease and entertain his / her dancers.