Syncopation is the accentuation of a musical beat that normally would be weak according to a song's rhythmic division. Though difficult to spell phonetically, this quote was the highlight of my morning today. It came from the throat/mouth of one of the clinic’s Setswana-English interpreters, and each syncopated syllable corresponded to the the off-beats of the morning song. I call the song “Botswanana”, because that is the word in the song that most resembles a word that I have heard before. We sing it at a few times a week just before clinic starts.
As we sang and kept time, a 2 year-old child stood in the waiting area slapping his hands together. He was off beat and looked as if he were carelessly slapping at darting mosquitoes…but he was the reason we were all there.
