Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Kye Kye Kule?

Since the summer of 1996, one of the audience-participation songs that Shannon has done has been "Shay Shay Cool Yay". After watching a Camp School staff member do it before breakfast morning, Shannon knew he had to learn it. After writing down the words he remembered, it came out like this:

Shay shay cool yay (repeat)
shay coal fee sah (repeat)
coal fee sah longa (repeat)
longa choomonga (repeat)
hey-a-lay-a-lay (repeat)
ONE MORE TIME NOW! (repeat)

Ever since then Shannon has done it that way. If you've seen it live you also know that he adds some crazy "motion" as he says each line.

Today, Shannon's "Shay Shay" world was changed forever.

This morning, Shannon and his kids were listening to "Old Joe Clark", a newer CD from Jill Trinka and John M. Feierabend. All of the sudden, Shannon heard something that sounded awfully familiar:






Kye kye, Kule (repeat)
Kye kye Kofi nsa (repeat)
Kofi nsa langa (repeat)
Kaka shi langa (repeat)
Kum adende (repeat twice)
Hey!

It was the exact same song, but with the real words. Eleven years after hearing it for the first time, Shannon finds out that the words aren't just jibberish. After doing some digging, we found out that this song is actually a Ghanian childrens folk song. Who knew?

Oddwalk is going to look into getting booked on the Ghana youth rally circuit.

1 comment:

  1. I'm glad you found the real words, but I at least know how to pronounce the way you wrote it! :D

    ReplyDelete