Monyaka Oa Pelo

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The song is based on a beautiful love poem in rhyming verse by Bennett Makalo Khaketla (1913-2000), the Lesotho writer and politician whose words Moerane used in several of his works. It provides an interesting example of how Moerane adapted poetry to his musical needs. He halves the length of the two verses of Khaketla's seven-verse poem that he uses, for example, and repeats certain words, in the course of 75 bars of music filled with engaging rhythms, interesting melodic phrases, and chromatically inflected harmonies that exude the joyfulness of young love, eschewing completely the darker tone of the last line of the lyrics.