Songs on the Vanilla Trail by Nathalie Soussana

Songs on the Vanilla Trail by Nathalie Soussana

An enchanting collection of 25 traditional songs pays homage to the rich cultural heritage and multilingual communities of East and Southern Africa. The resulting highly mixed musical styles that are unique to each region demonstrate how they welcomed new horizons through contact with others. A wide array of styles--skipping rope songs from Mozambique, lullabies from South Africa, counting songs from R union, traditional dance tunes from Madagascar--are all performed exquisitely by men, women, and children in more than a dozen languages and dialects. Vibrant compelling artwork and homegrown instruments, such as the tube zither, the kayamb, the bobre, the segakordeon and ravanne drums round off this wonderful celebration of history, language, and culture. Lyrics appear transcribed in their original language and translated to English followed by extensive notes describing the cultural background of each song and a map of East and Southern Africa. This picture book is accompanied by a CD featuring 25 recorded songs along with unique code for the digital download of the audio.

Nathalie Soussana is the writer and producer of the shows � l'ombre de l'olivier, Romances de Paris, and Silence on tourne and participated in the show Schubert et plus . . . si affinit�s staged at the Th��tre du Renard in Paris. She is also author of the album Berceuses et comptines de Babouchkao. B�atrice Alemagna has published more than 20 albums and has been awarded several prestigious prizes, including the Figures Futur de Montreuil (France), the Attention Talent-FNAC (France), the Prix Octogones (France), the Prix Andersen (Italy), the Prix Chronos (France), two selections for the Prix Baobab du Salon du Livre jeunesse de Montreuil (France), the Bologna Ragazzi Award in Italy (special mention), the Prix de l'album illustr� de Rueil (France), and the Book Award in Taipei (Taiwan).