Being that October 1st, is Nigerian Independence Day. I wanted to do something in honor of my home country. I am of the Yorùbá ethnicity, so I wanted to work with it.
The piece of text I decided on using were the lyrics to a song called “The Horse, The Man & The Son“ by legendary musician, Ebenezer Obey. The song is almost 20 minutes. The song tells the story of an Aesop Fable with a similar title.
The fable tells the story of a man and his son being accompanied by their donkey and meet constant criticism from passers-by of the way it is used or treated by them. The story's purpose is to show that everyone has their own opinion and there is no way one can satisfy all. You might have a similar version of this story based on where you’re from!
(Just a quick note, in Yoruba the word “ketekete” translates more to a mule or donkey. The standard word for horse is “esin.”)
Words I want to count:
👀 To start, I copied and pasted the lyrics of the song into a text file.