¹ Interview, Mrs. Peris Wanjira Gachaũ, 5 August 2000, Mũkurweinĩ division of Nyeri District, Kenya. During the interview, Mrs. Gachaũ remembered specific details of her experiences at Ngoigo Independent School as a result of singing verses of this song and fragmented parts of others she learned in school. This song was included in a Kikuyu songbook written by Gakaara wa Wanjaũ in the 1940s for students attending Kikuyu Independent Schools. In an interview with Gakaara wa Wanjaũ at his printing company in Karatina on 2 August 2000, he gave me a copy of a small book entitled, Nyimbo cia Mau Mau or Songs of the Mau Mau. Among the 35 songs written in the Kikuyu language, Korwo nĩ Ndemi Mathaathi was included in this collection. On reviewing my taped interviews with other Kikuyu elders I interviewed during a one year period, I discovered over 75% of the 55 interviewees discussed political songs as a way to recall details about various aspects of Kikuyu Independent Schools.

² Mr. Mutu wa Gethoi, my research assistant, assisted in translating this Kikuyu song into English. A similar version of this song, though with a different title, “Father, I Now Demand Education” appears in wa Kinyatti's, Maina book, Thunder from the Mountains: Mau Mau Patriotic Songs (London, 1980), 20–21Google Scholar. In the preface of this book, Kinyatti acknowledges songwriters Gakaara wa Wanjaũ and Kĩnũthia Mũgĩa, as well as the students of Kikuyu Independent Schools who once performed many of the songs in the book.

³ Interview, Mrs. Peris Wanjira Gachaũ, 5 August 2000, Mũkurweinĩ, Kenya.

⁴ In interviews with Ms. Leah Wanjirũ, Mzee Kĩnũthia Mũgĩa, Mzee Leonard Mũirũrĩ Njũgũna, and Mzee Walter Mũgĩa, variations of Korwo nĩ Ndemi Mathaathi were discussed as the elders remembered songs and other specifics taught in their schools.

⁵ Interview, Mrs. Peris Wanjira Gachaũ, 5 August 2000. The Kiswahili word uhuru means freedom.

⁶ The Kikuyu term Indi was widely used among Kikuyu communities to refer to independent schools.

⁷ Interview, Mzee Daniel Kĩnũthia Mũgĩa, 10 July 2000, Waithaka, Kenya. Mzee Mũgĩa was named the official performer of political songs by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. During the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, it is reported that he performed and co-wrote over 200 protest theme songs. He was also a co-founder and former teacher of Waithaka Karing'a Independent School during the from the late 1930s to the 1950s, when the school was closed.

⁸ Halbwachs, Maurice, The Collective Memory (New York, 1980), 48Google Scholar.

⁹ Connerton, Paul, How Societies Remember (Cambridge, 1989), 36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Interview, Ms. Leah Wanjirũ, 20 March 2000, Eastlands-Nairobi, Kenya. Ms. Wanjirũ attended Tumbaya Mission School for three years and then transferred to Ngoigo Independent School. At the age of thirteen, she was caught and arrested by colonial police for feeding “Mau Mau” fighters. Ms. Wanjirũ was able to recall and perform several Kikuyu songs that were taught in school, and she remembers that Turaka Churu Iitu was very popular in the Nyeri District of Kenya during the mid-1940s.

¹¹ interview, Ms. Leah Wanjirũ, 20 March 2000, Eastlands-Nairobi, Kenya. Gĩthũngũri Teacher's College was designed to serve as the educational hub for all independent schools. Several elders mentioned this particular song during their interviews. Ms. Wanjirũ sang most of the songs in Kikuyu. The English translation, however, is taken from wa Kinyatti, Maina, Thunder from the Mountains, 21Google Scholar. One important variation of this song worth highlighting is the replacement of the noun “Kenyan” with “Kikuyu” by some elders.

¹² Halbwachs, , Collective Memory, 130Google Scholar.

¹³ Interview, Mzee Walter Njũgũna Mũgĩa, 10 July 2000 Dagoretti, Kenya. Walter Mũgĩa taught mathematics, history, Christian religion, and music at Waithaka Karing'a Indi School during the 1930s-1950s.

¹⁴ Interview, Mzee Walter Njũgũna Mũgĩa and Mzee Leonard Mũirũrĩ Njũgũna, 10 July 2000 Dagoretti, Kenya. Leonard Mũirũrĩ was a student at Waithaka Karing'a Indi School. According to Wazee Mũgĩa and Mũirũrĩ, the song Thomai Mũno Inyui Chiana was taught in most Indi schools. This fact was confirmed when other former students and teachers of Indi schools as far as Karatina, Naivasha, and Fort Hall mentioned similar versions of this song and others in their interviews.

¹⁵ Mutu wa Gethio, my research assistant, assisted in recording the Kikuyu language and English translation of this song. A longer version of this song in English appears in wa Kinyatti, Maina, Thunder from the Mountains, 22Google Scholar.

¹⁶ KNA/MK/2/5, Kikuyu Karing'a Education Association Schools (KKEA), 1940-1952. Letters and colonial inspection reports prepared by educational officers as well as funding requests by various Karing'a independent school officials reveal that many Karing'a schools struggled to provide quality education, but many maintained standards that were recognized by the Colonial Department of Education as “adequate” and in some cases “exceptional.” Each inspection report made detailed comments on the physical development of the schools: building construction, school garden, playing grounds, sanitation facilities, and school equipment. These records confirm some of the memories of Kikuyu elders with regard to the physical importance of independent schools. Of course there was wide variation in Karing'a schools. Some were governed and maintained with high standards equal to or better than the average European and American mission schools, while others maintained very poor standards. Previous scholarship written on Kikuyu independent schools concluded that all Karing'a schools, in particular, were poorly administrated, staffed, and attended. Moreover, historians and scholars have written that the colonial government did not know at first hand what type of educational activities took place in these schools. On the contrary, these colonial records, together with correspondence with Karing'a school headmasters and teachers, reveal that Karing'a schools received financial assistance and support from both the colonial government and missionary societies. This discovery is important because the alleged differences between KISA and Karing'a schools was created and exaggerated by the colonial administration. A majority of the Kikuyu elders interviewed were former students, teachers, and community members of KISA schools.

¹⁷ Interview, Mzee Leonard Mũirũrĩ Njũgũna, 10 July 2000 Dagoretti, Kenya.

¹⁸ Connerton, , How Societies Remember, 37Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Ibid.

²⁰ Ibid., 38.

²¹ The term ritual, as understood by Connerton, (ibid., 43-45), refers to a symbolic character that draws the attention of its participants to objects of thought and feeling that they hold to be of special significance. And rituals are expressive acts only by virtue of their conspicuous regularity. They are formalized acts and tend to be stylized and repetitive, but they are not merely formal. Ritual performances take place in everyday life and they explicitly claim continuity to the past.

²² Ibid., 41-47.

²³ Kenyatta, Jomo, Facing Mt. Kenya: The Tribal Life of the Gikuyu (New York, 1965), 97Google Scholar.

²⁴ wa Thiong'o, Ngũgĩ, Decolonizing the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature (London, 1986), 45Google Scholar.

²⁵ Interview, Ms. Margaret Wambui Kenyatta, 3 June 2000, Nairobi, Kenya. Ms. Kenyatta is the daughter of Jomo Kenyatta and a former teacher at Gĩthũngũri Teacher's College, where she taught biology, geography, and English from 1948 to 1951. As a teacher at Gĩthũngũri, Ms. Kenyatta remembers that the quality of education at this school and other Indi schools was comparable to most missionary schools.

²⁶ Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (rev. ed.: London, 1983), 44–46, 134–35, 139–40Google Scholar.

²⁷ Interview, Gakaara wa Wanjaũ, 2 August 2000, Karatina, Kenya at his printing company.

²⁸ Ibid. The song Niĩũ Wakwĩrire Utuĩke Mũteti? appears in the revised songbook, Nyimbo cia Mau Mau, written by Mzee Wanjaũ. My research assistant, Mutu wa Gethoi assisted in the English translation of this song. KAU (Kenya African Union) was the political incarnation of the Kikuyu Central Association. Jomo Kenyatta later realized a united multi-ethnic political party was essential to build solidarity with all African communities in Kenya, and to educate the masses to focus their collective energies towards ending colonialism.

²⁹ Interview, Gakaara wa Wanjaõ, 2 August 2000.

³⁰ Turner, Victor, ed., Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual (Washington, 1982), 21Google Scholar.

³¹ Interview, Mr. Samual Waruhiũ, 23 March 2000, Westlands-Nairobi, Kenya. Mr. Waruhiũ is the son of the late Chief Kungu Waruhiũ—a colonial-appointed Kikuyu Chief who was murdered by “Mau Mau” freedom fighters. Samual Waruhiũ was a recent graduate of Makerere University College in Uganda and was a graduate student in England when he heard the news of his father's assassination while listening to a BBC radio news report. Far removed from his family and close friends, he had not discussed his personal feelings about his father's tragic death for nearly 40 years. Mzee Waruhiũ's memory of Kikuyu independent schools and their political activities stem from the perspective of one who observed the events of the schools from second-hand accounts. However, during the interview, he remembered in detail his experience at a KISA rally and how the political music and speeches made an impression on him that lasted for years. Tim Parsons has interviewed Kenyan soldiers from World War II who remember meeting “[b]lack American soldiers in Nairobi on holiday, but the colonial government quickly barred their entrance into Kenya because they refused to acknowledge or cooperate with British military officers of lower rank or colonial police in Nairobi.” Mzee Waruhiũ also remembered the names of former classmates who attended Alliance High School with him who came from Independent schools. He stated that “there were many very bright classmates at Alliance from KISA schools, so the quality of education at some Indi schools must have been as good, if not better, than what I received at a mission school.”

³² Interview, Mr. Samual Waruhiũ, 23 March 2000.

³³ Interview, Mrs. Mũthoni Likimani, 8 May 2000, Nairobi. Mrs. Likimani, a well-known Kenyan writer and former broadcasting celebrity in Kenya, was one of the first Kikuyu women broadcasters on Kenyan radio and television during the early 1960s to the late 1970s. One of Mrs. Likimani's best-selling books, Passbook Number F.47927: Women and Mau Mau in Kenya (Basingstoke, 1985)Google Scholar is a fictional account of the type of ordeals and experiences African women encountered during the Mau Mau rebellion. The number in the title of the book was the passbook identity number assigned her by the colonial government during the State of Emergency. In addition to her extensive writing career, Mrs. Likimani is the owner of a publishing company in Nairobi to encourage Kenyan women to publish their stories.

³⁴ Interview, Mrs. Mũthoni Likimani, 8 May 2000, The Kiswahili term mzungu means European, white person, foreigner, or outsider.

³⁵ Interview, Mr. Francis Kasina, 9 May 2000, Nairobi. Mr. Kasina did not attend an independent school, but his brothers attended Gĩthũngũri Teachers' College during the time the colonial government arrested teachers and leaders of the school and then closed it. As the youngest brother, Mr. Kasina's educational opportunities were different and advanced. He attended a small missionary school near Nyeri and continued his education at Kagumo Teachers' College and became a teacher. In 1957 he received a scholarship to attend Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. After receiving his BA in History in 1961, he continued his education at McGill University, where he studied International Relations. He then returned to the United States in 1963 to study Foreign Affairs Politics at Columbia University. In 1964 Mr. Kasina returned to Kenya and was asked by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta to join the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1965 to 1985 Mr. Kasina worked as a top Kenyan government official in several European countries until his retirement in 1989.

³⁶ Interview, Gakaara wa Wanjaũ, 2 August 2000. Wanjaũ's, Mzee book, Mau Mau Author In Detention (Nairobi, 1983)Google Scholar, or, as it is best known in Kenya, Mwandĩki wa Mau Mau Ithaanĩrio-inĩ won the Noma Award in 1984. Mzee Wanjaũ included many songs outlined throughout the diary narrative form to illustrate how difficult and painful the experience was for all political detainees. For seven years Mzee Wanjaũ wrote daily accounts of what happened in the detention camps, and the political songs in the book capture the memory and emotions of this experience. The public memory of this experience was not forgotten because, as the detainees sang their songs of political resistance, thousands outside the detention camps received the songs and sang them throughout the country.

³⁷ wa Wanjaũ, Gakaara, Mau Mau Author, 4Google Scholar. In 1988 the English translation of the book from the Kikuyu language was completed by Ngigĩ wa Njoroge.

³⁸ Ibid., 16.

³⁹ wa Thiong'o, Ngũgũ, Decolonizing the Mind, 23Google Scholar. The expression “threw up singers” most likely means the peasantry and urban working class “acknowledged, honored, celebrated” singers.

⁴⁰ Wachsmann, Klaus P., ed., Essays on Music and History in Africa (Evanston, 1971), 27–31Google Scholar. Gilbert Rouget recorded a number of court songs in 1952 at king Gbefa's court and also recorded songs of different princes and ministers in 1958. Rouget argues (“Court Songs and Traditional History in the Ancient Kingdoms of Porto-Novo and Abomey, Dahomey” in Essays on Music and History in Africa, ed. Wachsmann, Klaus P. (Evanston, 1971), 31Google Scholar, that “[w]e are dealing with music that is made to be listened to, that carries a message meant to be thoroughly understood, and whose main interest lies, consequently, in the meaning of the words.” Most Kikuyu Indi school songs—as well as the political and detention songs—conveyed important facts about specific events, ideas, realities, people, traditions, and cultural transformations.

⁴¹ Merriam, Alan P., “The Use of Music as a Technique of Reconstructing Cultural History in Africa” in Shelemay, Kay Kaufman ed., Ethnomusicological Theory and Method (New York, 1990), 135Google Scholar.

⁴² Ibid., 136.

⁴³ Herskovits, Melville J., Dahomey: an Ancient West African Kingdom (2 vols.: New York, 1938), 2:321Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Harries, Patrick, “‘A Forgotten Corner of the Transvaal’: Reconstructing the History of a Relocated Community through Oral Testimony and Song” in Bozzoli, Belinda, ed., Class, Community and Conflict: South African Perspectives (Johannesburg, 1987), 93Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 103.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 102.

⁴⁷ Vail, Leroy and White, Landeg, “Forms of Resistance: Songs and Perceptions of Power in Colonial Mozambique,” American Historical Review 88(1983), 908–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.