Koli ea Malla

Culturally, ‘Koli ea Malla’ belongs to a genre of traditional funeral songs or dirges that is common in Lesotho. The words are not about a particular person or an individual bereavement, however, but about sorrow in a more generalised sense. They refer to the folk tale of Tselane and to ‘Limo’, meaning ‘Cannibal’ – with a capital C – which could be referring to the Cannibalism that was not unknown during desperate times of famine in Lesotho’s past. Perhaps, too, the song refers more broadly to the destructiveness of civil strife and the sorrow it brings to everyone.