Having covered an awful lot of GIA songs over the years, those in Gather 3rd edition that I haven’t got to are sometimes songwriters with little traction on Australia, but often those songs from other cultures that an Australian assembly might find a struggle – often in, GIA’s case, curated by John Bell via Wild Goose.
This is a Zimbabwean gathering song by Alexander Gondo, here arranged by John Bell. I was rewatching John Bell’s “Singing the Unsung” DVD recently and he mentions that African songwriters write on their feet and use their whole body, and this is a good example of that observation.
The sheet music available to buy at GIA now has verses by Gary Daigle not in the Gather 3rd ed. version – the text is in their preview. The text is bilingual: Shona and English. It is also available in this inexpensive collection at Wild Goose.
In my BIAB backing the descant kicks in the second time through.
I can find any number of white Americans singing this YouTube, but no African versions – here is a selection of the many.
A tutorial: