Alina

Alina is a warning to a teenage girl (Alina) to beware of unscrupulous men. We don’t know when Moerane composed it, but the message of parental anxiety it expresses, about a girl falling prey to ‘Mr Bigmouth’ or ‘Smooth-talker’, is timeless. Judging from the reference to streams and valleys, the likely setting of the song is rural Lesotho, where Moerane lived during the last twenty years of his life. The music of this long and elaborate song is full of Romantic harmonies, rising sequential phrases, and lyrical, flowing melodic lines that express both a sense of the seductive forces of youthful love and of the family’s concern. ‘Khale, O! khale, Re lla re ntse re memetsa!’ – We’ve been calling for you for ages! – so sing the desperate parents, ‘Haufi le hole’ – All over the place! In order to help choirs learn this song, a free mp3 of the lyrics spoken by Mpho Ndebele is downloadable when the song is purchased along with a rehearsal mp3 of the song at a slow tempo.
Duration: 2’15”

The audio sample below was generated from the Sibelius file of the score and the image on the right shows the first page of the score.