Askew, Kelly. 1997. “Performing the Nation: Swahili Musical Performance and the Production of Tanzanian National Culture”. Harvard University thesis, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

This work, subsequently published by the University of Chicago Press in 2002 as Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania, contains an appendix of 43 song texts and translations. Though called songs many are rhymed poems

Some of these are presented here, in some cases with slightly altered translations. These modern compositions often use vocabulary in modern senses not captured in existing dictionaries.