{"id":6063,"date":"2026-04-25T09:37:53","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T13:37:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/?p=6063"},"modified":"2026-04-25T09:41:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T13:41:42","slug":"wazee-wa-kisa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wazee-wa-kisa\/","title":{"rendered":"Wazee Wa Kisa (Herbert Misango)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Wazee Wa Kisa\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4EXPJvEdB4Q?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Before getting to the post, a quick heads-up that I&#8217;m doing a small tour of the Midwest, starting next Saturday, May 2, in St. Louis, then hitting Kansas City, Urbana, Bloomington IN, Chicago, and Louisville. There&#8217;s a full schedule on my website at https:\/\/elijahwald.com\/2026concertdates.html, and please spread the word.<\/p>\n<p>As for the post&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes luckier than anyone deserves. Back in 1990, I hitchhiked from South Africa up through Zimbabwe and Zambia to Zaire (not yet renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo), where I studied guitar for several months with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/masanga\/\">Jean-Bosco Mwenda<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/lwa-kiyeke\/\">Edouard Masengo<\/a> &#8212; about which I&#8217;ve written in a half-dozen previous posts, listed below &#8212; then on to Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and finally Kenya.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-6064\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/R-1446131-1540259140-8854-e1777055607618.jpg?resize=254%2C254&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"254\" height=\"254\" \/>In Nairobi, I was hoping to find some of the musicians who had played on some wonderful acoustic guitar records that I&#8217;d heard on reissues from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/africa-to-appalachia\/\">John Storm Roberts<\/a>&#8216;s Original Music record label. Those records had been recorded in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and I had no idea how to go about finding any of the artists, or even if they were still alive. So, since I had no other ideas, I went into a music store &#8212; looking online, I see the main one was Melodica, and that might have been right, though none of the photos seem to be from that period and I can&#8217;t be sure.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I went in and there was an older-looking white (or maybe, if it was Melodica, South Asian) man behind the counter, and I went up and explained that I was trying to find some of the musicians who had recorded acoustic guitar music back thirty years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>The man looked at me like it was kind of a crazy question, and said, &#8220;Like who?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t remember a lot of names, but I said, &#8220;Well&#8230; like Herbert Misango, who recorded &#8216;Wazee Wa Kisa.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-6069 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/665999127ed82396c72f2b23_melodica9-e1777123474462.jpeg?resize=239%2C163&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"239\" height=\"163\" \/>And the man said, &#8220;He&#8217;s over there,&#8221; pointing to a man standing behind another counter on the other side of the store. And he was.<\/p>\n<p>Misango wasn&#8217;t playing anymore, but he was friendly and agreed to meet me that Saturday and took me to a small nightclub in a field behind an apartment complex where another of the older musicians, John Nzenze, was performing with a small group. I should have interviewed both of them; I should have had a camera with me and taken pictures. I should have done all sorts of things&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;but I didn&#8217;t. I just enjoyed meeting them and spending some time with them, and John Nzenze gave me a phone number for Fadhili William, who had recorded &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/malaika\/\">Malaika<\/a>,&#8221; and now was working in a gas station in New Jersey, and I eventually did interview him, back in the States, for the\u00a0<em>Boston Globe<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>And, back in the States, I buckled down and learned &#8220;Wazee Wa Kisa.&#8221; It&#8217;s the only guitar part I&#8217;ve ever learned by writing it out. I couldn&#8217;t figure out the rhythmic intricacies, how the bass worked against the treble, so I made some six-line tablature paper and wrote out the bass part, then wrote out the treble over it, then sat down with what I&#8217;d written and kind of got it, and went back to the record, and eventually worked it out. I showed it to my friend Dominic Kakolobango, who has also done a nice recording of it, and he translated the lyric for me, and a few years later I came up with an English translation to sing after the original Swahili.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s about it, except that my wife, Sandrine Sheon, worked with me for a while as a duo, playing clarinet, and for this one she would play a clave rhythm on a coke bottle, and I miss having her on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before getting to the post, a quick heads-up that I&#8217;m doing a small tour of the Midwest, starting next Saturday, May 2, in St. Louis, then hitting Kansas City, Urbana, Bloomington IN, Chicago, and Louisville. There&#8217;s a full schedule on my website at https:\/\/elijahwald.com\/2026concertdates.html, and please spread the word. As for the post&#8230; Sometimes you &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wazee-wa-kisa\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Wazee Wa Kisa (Herbert Misango)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Wazee Wa Kisa (Herbert Misango) - 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I'd never heard of Allen, and\u00a0 George was\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Bloodlines-LP.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1151,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/candyman\/","url_meta":{"origin":6063,"position":1},"title":"Candyman (Rev. Gary Davis\/Dave Van Ronk)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"May 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A classic from Rev. Gary Davis, and then Dave Van Ronk, Jack Elliott, and the rest of us... with commentary on guitar technique and lyrical confusion","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"Dave van ronk8","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Dave-van-ronk8.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5344,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/crawling-baby\/","url_meta":{"origin":6063,"position":2},"title":"That Crawling Baby Blues (Lemon Jefferson)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"September 21, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Lemon Jefferson was an incredibly varied and idiosyncratic guitarist, and \"That Crawling Baby Blues\" is without doubt the most idiosyncratic guitar arrangement I've ever learned -- or at least ever retained -- with a lyric to match. As a result, I've never performed it in public, but always enjoyed playing\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/blind-lemon-Jefferson.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3185,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/someday\/","url_meta":{"origin":6063,"position":3},"title":"Someday (You&#8217;ll Want Me to Want You)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"November 3, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This is another I learned off Red Steagall's Lone Star Beer and Bob Wills Music LP, and the odd thing is I'd never heard it before and have rarely heard it since, though it has been recorded by dozens of major artists, from Elton Britt, Gene Autry, Vaughan Monroe, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Someday-sheet-music-Elton-Britt-219x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":863,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/got-blues-cant-satisfied\/","url_meta":{"origin":6063,"position":4},"title":"Got the Blues, Can&#8217;t Be Satisfied (John Hurt)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"April 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"This has always been one of my favorite John Hurt songs -- it's a murder ballad and a cheating song, in the best southern country tradition, but framed with a quietly philosophical fatalism that makes a striking contrast to the melodrama and violence of the central story. I often teach\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"John Hurt","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/John-Hurt-300x243.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2211,"url":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/let-mermaids-flirt\/","url_meta":{"origin":6063,"position":5},"title":"Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me (John Hurt\/William Myer)","author":"Elijah Wald","date":"December 3, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Another favorite from Mississippi John Hurt, with a wonderful lyric by William E. Myer, a lawyer and briefly a record company owner in the late 1920s.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"lonesome-ace-label","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Lonesome-Ace-label.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6063"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6072,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6063\/revisions\/6072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elijahwald.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}