Save for the RB 1 programme, Dipina le Maboko, there is hardly any radio programme or a presenter for that matter whose primary interest is to promote traditional folk music. One can only decry that Batswana have got the tendency of acknowledging people when they are dead. As if that is not enough, those who are alive are largely ignored and most of them live in poverty. This begs the question: Do we have to wait for another great artist to die before we heap praise on him or her? This week, Arts and Culture pays homage to some of the sons and daughter of the soil who have been in the forefront of traditional music.
When it comes to folk music, great legends have come and gone and perhaps the most prominent of them is Ratsie Setlhako who has also been described as a poet of sorts in some quarters. Interestingly, this writer's 'connection' to the man comes from the fact that he was a member of the Bangwato mophato (age-regiment) Masokola inducted in 1912 and led by my grandfather and namesake, Gasebalwe Seretse (Sekgoma) according to writer Modirwa Kekwaletswe and when he sang he would indeed boast that he was a Lesokola. Despite Ratsie's humble life, he remains the most prominent Motswana folk artist of all time and that he even had a school named after him. In Botswana, schools and other institutions have been mostly named after royals, politicians and educationists and the man was able to transcend that. Ratsie, with the help of his poetic voice and his segaba managed to set a trend that many hope to emulate. So famous are the man's song that one traveller actually told this writer that one day he heard the man's song being played on an British Airways aeroplane. Did the mostly non-Batswana passengers understand the man's music or were they attracted to it by the melodious singing and the skilful playing of the segaba? Some of the Lesokola's famous songs include A Re Chencheng and Ka Mponwane. Sadly when Ratsie died in a car accident in 1979, he was a pauper.
