Woyaya

You get a piano/SATB score and a vocal score pdfs, an mp3 of the recording, a piano-only mp3, and rehearsal mp3s of each of the four vocal parts. It is sung here by the Starry Mountain Singers. The piano and vocal parts in this arrangement are both pretty easy.  You can do the piece a cappella using the four-part harmonization in the second half of the arrangement.

Peter Amidon first became aware of this piece through the great arrangement by Dr. Ysaye Barnwell. When he was asked to lead the choir singing Woyaya for a Guilford (VT) Community Church service, Peter went back to the original version by the British Afro-Pop group Osibisa and the version by Art Garfunkel to come up with this arrangement.

You can have one of your singers add a solo improvized “Woyaya” here and there that anticipates the “Woyayas” in the chorus, as is done by Starry Mountain tenor Gideon Crevoshay in this performance.

• Osibisa original version
• Osibisa perform Woyaya live
• Art Garfunkel
• Ysaye Barnwell arrangement

LYRICS

Woyaya
words by Annie Masembe from Uganda

We are going, heaven knows where we are going,
We’ll know we’re there.
We will get there, heaven knows how we will get there,
We know we will.

It will be hard we know
And the road will be muddy and rough,
But we’ll get there, heaven knows how we will get there,
We know we will.

Woyaya, woyaya,
Woyaya, woyaya