By Ts’eliso Monaheng*

When I was growing up, Independence Day was quite a big deal in and around Maseru, Lesotho. Besides it being a public holiday, it carried with it the promise of festivities which usually occurred at our national stadium. A lot has changed since then, and some would claim for the worse. But instead of writing about another factory workers’ strike, yet another double-digit salary hike for ministers, or a former convict being appointed to public office, I would rather focus on other things — like music for instance. Music is central to our existence as Basotho, and even though we too are victims of the usual cacophony of western sounds dominating our airwaves (with a dip of Kwaito and house, courtesy of our South African neighbours), there are genres which have managed to fare well commercially. Below is a collection of videos sourced from youtube. Some of them are quite dated — our artists seem not to hold Internet presence in high regard at all.

Sankomota’s ‘Stop the war’. Arguably still the best musical export from Lesotho by far, even though most of the members are no more:

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