Doing Chumburung songs—A taxonomy of styles Gillian Hansford ...

Example 21
Ase̱ŋ maa kpa se̱sɛ,
Se̱sɛ e̱ de̱ŋ ɔ kpa ase̱ŋ. (x3)
Kurukutukuu kuu.
Trouble does not look for a person,
It’s the person who looks for trouble.
(sound of legs running)
The hunter realises that if he does not take the singing tortoise home with him
to prove his point, no one will believe him. So the chief calls a meeting and says
that if the tortoise sings, the man will get his daughter to marry. The hunter
says, “If the tortoise doesn’t sing, kill me”. Needless to say, the tortoise does not
comply, and they kill the man. Whereupon the tortoise once again sings his
song, “Trouble does not look for a person, it’s the person who looks for trouble!”
Itee iliŋ are story songs, and I was told that they will not be used in palogo. They
are short, and not about sickness or death, and may be happy or sad. Themes are
various and some are proverbial.
9.2 History
Whereas songs in story-telling are sung by the audience, those within history
retelling will probably be unknown to them. They are known as nkyoṟɔ iliŋ
“praise songs”.
An old woman called Amo̱-a-daŋ, who lives at Bankamba, was reputed to “know
a lot of history”. So I went to record what she knew. She first describes how
there was a war, but does not at first say clearly where this was or when. In it
she stresses that it was only the Banda section of Chumburung that fought. This
Banda section, also called Baŋdaa Teḵpaŋ-aye̱, has its chief sitting at Banda town,
and includes Bankamba.
There are two stories of the migration of the Chumburung people. One of them
seems to relate more to the most northern of the five sections of Chumburung. In
it, some of them originated from the Fante area in Central Region, and moved
north. At Yapei, they met the Gonja who asked them to lead in driving out the
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