Mapetle a Hukung
(Hukung’s Delicious Food)
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Mohapeloa wrote Mapetle a Hukung in the late 1930s, first publishing it in Morija in 1939 as the ninth of 32 songs in Meloli le Lithallere tsa Afrika ka J.P. Mohapeloa: Buka ea Bobeli [African Songs and Extemporary Harmonizations by J.P. Mohapeloa: Book II]. Mohapeloa continued numbering songs in Meloli II - his second songbook - from where his previous book, Meloli I ended; thus Mapetle a Hukung is song No. 41 in Meloli II, not No. 9. It is one of his best comic songs, the ‘food’ in question being alcohol: potent home brewed maize beer (‘skokian’) mixed with brandy (‘gau fang’). The music pivots around two or three chords that give it a ‘Joburg township’ jazz feel notwithstanding the Lesotho setting of the song.