Lesotho’s Famo music: from shepherd songs to gang wars

MASERU, Lesotho — Puseletso Seema is musical royalty in the tiny African mountain kingdom of Lesotho, where she’s known as “the Queen of Famo” -– a popular genre of pastoral accordion music beloved by the country’s people, the Basotho.

But for all her fame, she never got rich, and the 77-year-old grandmother’s living conditions these days are far from regal.

She resides in a small, run-down home along a dusty road in the rural areas outside the capital, where small boys ride donkeys under the shadows of the mountains, and shepherds wrapped in colorful, patterned blankets watch over flocks of sheep.

It’s winter, with strikingly clear blue skies and snow on the distant mountain peaks. Seema doesn’t have money for electricity and is not well, coughing a lot as she reminisces about becoming the first woman to break into a music industry that was once strictly the preserve of men.

“Famo music is a music that is like jazz in other countries, it’s the genre most known in Lesotho,” she explains. “It’s a music that is emotionally connected, you can express your happiness, sadness, all your feelings.”

Journalist Motsamai Mokotjo, who has written on the topic, explains famo this way: “In essence it’s engraved in folk law, you know, it’s poetry fused with the accordion.”

“It speaks to the history of Basotho and everything that’s going on in the country. It’s more like what people in America would say is hip hop, it’s a form of expression,” he adds.

 Wayfarers’ Hymns

Lesotho is one of the world’s poorest countries, and Seema grew up with very little. She had no schooling and was put to work by her family as a child looking after the livestock. Usually it was boys who worked as shepherds, but Seema’s parents didn’t have a son. Still, she held her own.

“When I was in the fields I would sometimes fight with some of the herdboys,” she laughs. “And I started singing this music when I was a shepherd.”

Famo started as a rural music among Lesotho’s shepherds, but migrated to the urban areas along with the Basotho who went to work in South Africa’s mines in the 20th century.

“It was there where they were introduced to an accordion,” says Mpho Malikeng, a Maseru musician and artist who is an expert on famo. “That is the primary instrument of famo music.”

Lesotho is entirely surrounded by South Africa, whose mineral wealth and vast gold deposits made it a center of mining for decades. After a long day down the shafts, mineworkers would gather at rowdy makeshift pubs called shebeens, and play famo.

Seema, too, went to try and make her fortune in Johannesburg, sometimes dubbed “egoli” or the city of gold. Not as a miner, but a performer for the miners – just as when she was a herder, a woman entering a man’s world.

“I’m the first woman to produce famo music,” she says. “Because that music was known for men to sing it and for women to dance to it, flicking up their skirts, when they went to shebeens.”

Government Ban

Famo has changed a lot since Seema’s day. These days, it’s become inextricably associated with gang violence.

While there are no exact statistics on how many lives have been lost to famo-related violence, it is bad enough that last year the Lesotho government launched a crackdown, banning some groups entirely as well as prohibiting media from reporting on the gang wars.

“There are disturbing issues of murders taking place these days. Our families, relatives and friends are killed by these Famo gangs,” said diamond magnate Prime Minister Sam Matekane last year.

“As the government we have released a gazette that indicates that these groups or these people, wherever they are, they should be known as terrorists,” he added.

The government launched the crackdown after a spate of famo revenge killings in 2024. In one, in April, five members of the same family were killed. In July, famo star Khopolo Kholue, was gunned down alongside a local journalist investigating the gang wars.

Mpho Malikeng , a musician and cultural activist from Lesotho, says the violence all comes down to famo musicians trading barbed insults in their song lyrics – and the antipathy then turns to real violence.

“It’s like a rap battle, so you have to diss your fellow battler, by dissing them, you’re making them come up with better verses, and they’re also dissing you back,” he says.

Like a Rap Beef

He likens the situation to the East coast-West coast rivalry between hip hop groups in 1990s Los Angeles, that resulted in the murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G.

There is also friction over turf, he adds, explaining: “You cannot be in a certain area listening to so-and so …. It may even cost you your life.”

However he says he thinks the government has gone too far with the bans, especially as some politicians and members of the security forces are themselves alleged to be involved with Famo gangs.

“It has even infiltrated into the political landscape of the country, the politicians use all this to try and garner support for electioneering,” he says.

Prime Minister Matekane has admitted some members of the police are involved with famo gangs, saying: “We have learned as the government that some members of the security agencies are on the front row in these famo gangs. I appeal to them to quit that thing and do what they are employed to do.”

NPR phoned police minister Lebona Lephema for comment on the crackdown, but he declined to comment and hung up.

Despite having a population of only 2.3 million, Lesotho has high murder rates and illegal firearms are rife. The gang violence has also spilled into neighboring South Africa.

Famo music is still popular among illegal miners there, who risk their lives exploring disused mine shafts to eke out a living. Many of them are Basotho, and are known as “zama zamas,” or “those who take a chance.” Some of them are engaged in gang violence too.

“Queen of Famo,” Seema, doesn’t want to comment on the gang wars that have become part of the music culture. But she will say: “I don’t like music that is vulgar or insulting or insinuating any hate.”