Obe

Obviously modelled on a folktale, and composed in a wonderfully mock-serious style, ‘Obe’ is almost the longest song in Mohapeloa’s 2nd songbook, Meloli II, and the penultimate. (The last one, ‘Coronation March’ is the longest.) With its high tessitura, perhaps in part to represent the frightened child to whom the story of a ghastly creature is told, and its wide leaps, this virtuoso piece is a challenge for any choir, let alone the kind of school choir for whom it was originally composed in the 1930s. It has remained a popular competition song in southern Africa since then.