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24 The Society of Malawi Journal

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groups had in common “cultural forms of a syncretic nature.” And just as did
their asilikali precursors, each was amazingly amenable to change, reflecting the
immediate contexts of their performances.
The best example of this tradition is the ever-adaptable song “Sole”- a
rendering of the English word “sorry,” intended to signify “trouble” as well as
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“sorrow” - and which in the asilikali repertoire dates at least to the First World
War and was well-remembered by Great War veterans:

Sole! Sole!
Sole! Sole!
On this journey I did not know
That I could die in the war.
There is sorrow in war.
Sole! Sole!
Sole! Sole!
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Malawian asilikali were also singing the same song - with similar, though not
precisely the same lyrics - during their various campaigns in the Second World
War as well.
During several deployments in that new conflict, Malawian KAR singers
demonstrated considerable improvisational skill, as they “inserted anecdotes and
emotions, joyful, mournful and ribald” to match the new realities they found.
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When their prospects brightened with the end of that war, the asilikali stretched
the fabric of their lyrics beyond their sorrows and instead they “sang of joy to be
leaving Burma alive” and - perhaps most significantly - of “their ‘dziko la
Nyasaland’ … the country of Nyasaland” to which they could now return. Their
acceptance of that collective designation, first “used by Europeans to cover
congeries of tribes from the Lake Nyasa … and Lower Zambesi region,” marked

15 Christopher Kamlongera, “An Example of Syncretic Drama from Malawi:
Malipenga,” Research in African Literatures 17, 2 (1986): 201. For a historical
overview of these groups, see T. O. Ranger, Dance and Society in Eastern Africa
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975): passim.
16 Hanley, Monsoon Victory, 121.
17 Niwehane Mahlasa, interview I-39, conducted 28 September 1972 by Yusuf
Juwayeyi and Melvin E. Page at the Old Soldiers Home, Zomba; and Joswa
Mhere, interview I-43, conducted 4 January 1973 by Yusuf Juwayeyi and Melvin
E. Page at the Old Soldiers Home, Zomba. For details regarding these and other
interviews cited, see Melvin E. Page, The Chiwaya War: Malawians and the First
World War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000): 236-39.
18 Shepperson, “Poetry of Two World Wars,” 16.