Five Videos Of The Botswana Music & Dance Group "Dikakapa"

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post provides information about the Botswana music and dance group "Dikakapa". This post also includes five videos of that group and selected comments from all but one of these videos discussion thread. Most of the selected comments provide information about what the individual songs mean.

The content of this post is presented for folkloric, cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the performers who are featured in these videos. In addition, thanks to 4thejuice, the publisher of these videos on YouTube.

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INFORMATION ABOUT DIKAKAPA
From https://www.musicinafrica.net/directory/dikakapa
"Dikakapa is a traditional music group from Gaborone, Botswana made up of nine members who are mainly members of the Botswana Defence Force, except for its two female members. Members include Dragon, Comeback, Jumbo, Ngo, Suzzi, Stsuatsue, Skuta, Esa, Fix-Stena, Tshumu, Tshutshu, Katli. The group came to the music scene in 2006 and has since made an impact in the country. They draw their musical inspiration from artists such as Seragantswana, Scar,Vee, Gong Master and Extra Musica.

As of July 2016 they were not signed to any record label. Their debut album �Selempu-re ya kae Batswana� earned them a mark. Some of the songs are their own compositions but they also modify and record some common songs to suit their style."
-snip-
I didn't include any of these comments below, but it should be noted that a number of comments to some of the discussion threads of videos that are showcased below (but particularly Dikakapa-Pula) expressed their regret that "Gong Master" had left Dikakapa. I'm not sure when that happened.

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SHOWCASE VIDEOS
Example #1: Dikakapa-O tswa kae



4thejuice Published on Apr 26, 2008

Gake rate metsamao ya gago...
-snip-
Selected comments from this video's discussion thread (These comments are numbered for referencing purposes only.)

1. SBUDEX, 2011
"What they sayin...? Bt she's kinda Hot. :P"

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2. Loasa, 2011
"@SBUDEX The whole song is one of those dreaded 'traditional interventions' that has come about as a result of the girl spending too much time away from home. As its tradition, the other guys are probably her uncles who've been called to help put her in a righteous path . The father is basically saying 'I don't like your behavior.if you're truly my child, you'll listen and obey me. I want you to grow up into a proper woman,someone worth marrying.You're breaking my heart my child.'"

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3. kenn Gondwe, 2015
"Hey Guys, Am a Malawian-Zambian born and found this song the best. I just love it even when i can understand the langauge. Help me with the basic meaning of the song and how i can get their music on CD. Please.

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Reply
4. Morebodi Modise, 2015
"+kenn Gondwe The group is called Dikakapa and they are from Botswana singing in Setswana. The song is about a rebellious young girl whom her grand-parents are rebuking her for misbehaving, particularly of sleeping out late, not respecting her virtue as a potential wife."

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5. adnissak ordep, 2016
"let's keep our music, dance and African tradition now and for the future generations."

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Badisa Bonamelo, 2016
"Edmore is a story of a girl who does not behave well and always uncontrollable and does not listen to her parents she says i am coming from wherever i want at anytime"

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Example #2: Dikakapa-Pula



4thejuice Published on Apr 27, 2008

pula naa naa!retlaa dika re kotshe!
-snip-
Selected comments from this video's discussion thread (These comments are numbered for referencing purposes only.)

1. Kat LaFrance, 2010
"Beautiful. Thanks so much for sharing with the world!"

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2. janny dada, 2012
"love love this video.thnx 4 the upload.made me all teary.love Africa...my mother land.my African people love u all.from East to west to North to south, Central etc

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[The following comment is written in response to several comments that �pula� means something different in Romanian]

3. TheTassmanian, 2013
"hahaha, i get what you mean i checked from google translate. Pula is simply rain in Setswana, pula na na means it should rain.. they are basically saying it should rain so they may eat and have full tummies.

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[This is written in response to questions about what the song means in English]

4. Costain Oaitse Kebatlege, 2014
"my English is not that good but I'll try; they are saying, rain come down so that we can have plenty of food to eat and have our stomachs full. the man is saying, we'll eat porridge. and then they keep on repeating..."

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5. Christine Amann, 2015
"This sounds like it is music from botswana. The comments talk about ssestwana. What is the difference?"

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Reply
6. Amogelang Moeng, 2015
"+Christine Amann SeTswana is a language spoken in Botswana ma'am"

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7. Maipelo Molathiwa, 2016
"pula means rain,the song is all about being happy tat year because it is raining, and we will have better harvest"

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Example #3: Dikakapa-Mmalobeto



4thejuice Published on May 15, 2008

basha reja maswe!reja ntshothwane mogodu wa peba!
-snip-
Selected comments from this video's discussion thread (These comments are numbered for referencing purposes only.)

1. justice bapadile, 2012
"he is saying he dates older women becoz his agemates go out with older men, who have cars and money"

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Reply
2. Obakeng Modise
"banna ba ba tona. elder man took my girlfriend so im consoling myself by dating older woman"

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Example #4: Dikakapa-Tsala



4thejuice Published on May 15, 2008

ao tsala yame!
-snip-
Selected comments from this video's discussion thread (These comments are numbered for referencing purposes only.)
1. Gofha Ronald Molale, 2011
"this song talks about how some FRIENDS-'TSALA' are good for nothing..and the back up singers confirms this by saying..."Oh wel my friend,yes,you my friend!""

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2. Agustin Pius, 2013
"Real African dance in an African setting even though I don't understand a word.

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3. Pious Chavula, 2013
"Tell me what does this song say. I like ghe dancing."

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Reply
4. Tlhabo I AM, 2013
"He is singing about his friend who betrayed him and then laughed at him when he was in trouble. He basically tells this "friend" of his to stop laughing because what comes around goes around. The language is seTswana from Botswana!!!!"

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Example #5: Dikapakapa selempu



petrose taole Published on Jun 19, 2017

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Categories: Botswana music and dance

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African Harvest Festivals: Botswana's Letlhafula Festival (information & videos)

Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post presents information about Letlhafula, a traditional annual Batswana festival. Five YouTube videos of this festival are also included in this post. Those videos showcase traditional dancing and singing performances and audience participation dancing during various Letlhafula festivals. In addition this post also showcases a video of an original Batswana song and a video of a Batswana Hip Hop song about this festival.

The content of this post is presented for folkloric, cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the performers who are featured in these videos. In addition. thanks to the publishers of these videos on YouTube.
-snip-
This post is part of pancocojams' ongoing series on African Harvest Festivals. Click that tag below to find other posts in this series.

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INFORMATION ABOUT LETLHAFULA
From https://tjdema.blogspot.com/2013/06/letlhafula-movable-feast-from-gaborone.html
TJ DEMA ...this too, is Africa(n). Friday, June 7, 2013
"LETLHAFULA: A movable feast from Gaborone to Germany

Further, German settlers to the Eastern Cape in 1858 often elected to wear the blue print that was widely available as a trade cloth and echoed the Blaudruk that they were familiar with in Germany," History of Shweshwe, Da Gama textiles.

And this ladies and gentlemen is one plausible explanation of why the Botswana national dress for women is made out of a fabric often colloquially referred to as German print. I�m writing about this because I�m in Berlin and it took twenty-four hours from my door in Gaborone to the hotel door in Potsdamer. So of course my first thought was how and why in the world we chose this particular fabric to don for our cultural ceremonies all the way in Southern Africa. Of course I know from my primary school social studies class that the Germans have a history with Namibia, which borders Botswana to the west, but I wondered what the connection might be between my temporary digs and back home.

Just last weekend I attended a food and culture festival in Botswana, known as Letlhafula. Letlhafula is a Setswana word meaning �harvest� and can be taken to mean a/the time of harvest

[...]

The festival is held every May probably because our winter begins around then and ends in July - give or take a couple of weeks on either end. This is arguably the best time to reap what we have sown before winter well and truly kicks in. I am what could be called an unreliable narrator because I�ve spent my entire life in the city and the seasons pass differently in urban spaces, more as a reference to fashion than food. The only quality time in a village setting that I got for eighteen years was 3 weeks every Christmas holiday, not enough time to properly pick up what a number of my village-raised peers know backwards. What I do know is this, that the way we traditionally marked the harvest time was by feasting on all of nature�s bounty (sounds like an ad for frozen veggies) and so this festival is a kind of urbanized celebration of that agrarian practice.

[...]

Setswana traditional cuisine is healthy, I suppose our idea of dessert would be fruit. The food is filling, often protein heavy but prepared in a way that hasn�t for whatever reason given the entire population gout given how much of it we eat. As one of our top 3 Miss Botswana beauty contestants recently said, - Botswana has more cows than people. In fact over 50% of the country's households own cattle.

Back at the festival, there is a sizable stage where a number of artists including traditional instrumentalists, dancers, poets reciting in Setswana and comedians regale the masses with words and sound and such stuff. All of this served in the great outdoors, well in a courtyard with tables over-layed with the leteise which my elderly aunts still call *Jeremane (a kind of lehnwort, although probably more of an adaptation rather than a direct loan of the word Germany). It is basically indigo fabric but these days it is available in a myriad of colors not just the original blue that our mothers always wear to weddings and cultural ceremonies such as the sending off of a bride to her in-laws the day after she is wed.

*Je � as in jerry
re � as in renegade
mane � as in, well as in mah- nay"

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SHOWCASE VIDEOS
Example #1: Orange Letlhafula.mp4



Gazette Lapologa, Published on May 30, 2011

Letlhafula is an annual Food & Dance Festival hosted by Botswanacraft on the last Saturday in May. Based on Traditions of Botswana the festival offers a wide variety of local foods cooked in large traditional pots, entertainment is provided with traditional dancing and music.
snip-
The "Orange" in this title and in several other banners at Letlhafula festivals is the name of "Orange Botswana", an international telecommunications company that is the corporate sponsor for these festivals.
From https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=27423545
"Orange Botswana (PTY) Ltd. provides mobile communications services in Europe. It offers converged voice, roaming, coverage, mobile downloads, mobile plan, broadband, fixed line, Internet, data, and mobile services. The company sells its products and services through retailers and distributors in France, Romania, Switzerland, Slovakia, Spain, the Caribbean, and Africa. Orange Botswana (PTY) Ltd. was formerly known as Vista Cellular (PTY) Ltd. and changed its name in March 2003. The company was founded in 1998 and is based in Gaberones, Botswana. Orange Botswana (PTY) Ltd. operates as a subsidiary of Orange."
-snip-
Hat tip to the editor of https://tjdema.blogspot.com/2013/06/letlhafula-movable-feast-from-gaborone.html for this information that was included below one of the photos that was featured in that article.

I mistakenly thought that "Orange Letlhafula" was the name of the festival because I wasn't familiar with the corporate name "Orange", and because I saw all of those video titles and stage banners with those words.

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Example #2: Orange Letlhafula.mp4



Gazette Lapologa Published on May 30, 2011

Letlhafula is an annual Food & Dance Festival hosted by Botswanacraft on the last Saturday in May. Based on Traditions of Botswana the festival offers a wide variety of local foods cooked in large traditional pots, entertainment is provided with traditional dancing and music.
-snip-
Here's the only comment to date that is posted in this video's discussion thread:
avidave, 2011
"Eish , if u could only post longer videos , Ke dule pelo gore ke utlwe ke gopola Botswana,havent seen the wonderful performance live in a very long time
-snip-
Google translate gave this Sesotho to English translation for the words "Ke dule pelo gore ke utlwe ke gopola" = "I'm sorry that I can remember it".

Perhaps a better English translation would have been something like "Remembering this makes me sad.�
-snip-
From https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eish
"eish
Used in South African English and Afrikaans to express exasperation or disbelief. The word was first transliterated from the Xhosa language to Afrikaans, and then into South African English.

"So, there's been ANOTHER power outage, hey, bru? Eish."
-snip-
I wonder if the word "eish" had its source in the four letter English curse word "sh&t".

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Example #3: Botswana Music Guitar - Obed - "Letlhafula".



Bokete7 Published on Nov 17, 2012

Born 1952, Obed Batlang from Tlokweng just outside Gaborone playing his song.

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Example #4: Krash Letlhafula



krash Wa'keli Published on Jul 5, 2012

New Music Video.'Letlhafula'.you always been waiting for it, after i performed this song at BTV,now you can enjoy and download it.
-snip-
This is an example of Hip-Hop music in Botswana. Notice the gestures that were adopted from African American originated & performed Hip Hop music.

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Example #5: ORANGE LETLHAFULA 2017




TheVoiceBW, Published on Jun 1, 2017

The 2017 edition of the Orange Lethafula.

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Categories: African harvest festivals African Hip Hop Botswana music and dance

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