Like Tora and Takai, Baamaaya has several segments, each with its name, musical phrases, and dance movements. Bamaaya is not linked with the chiefs of Dagbon,

 

It started in a village named Zheng within the chieftaincy area of Nantoŋ; there was a time when the town was hit by drought and hunger when one of the only tubaani (Bambara beans, similar to chickpeas) was the superior foodstuffs that could be grown. Satisfied with full bellies after their evening meal, children would jape about the compound with cornhusks complete in their waistbands saying, "Tubaan' kpinli," meaning "bowl of tubaani beans." For numerous days the grown-ups liked the children's play up until one day, an adult inquired them, "What are you doing?" The children did not respond because the African politeness of the era spoke that children sometimes are not supposed to talk straight to adults. A wise elder who was old enough to be a grandfather started a joking relationship with the children and spoke to them secretly. The children enlightened them that because their mothers had fed them nicely, their bellies were full, so they felt happy.

 

Drummers were invited to play for the kids. This was the beginning of Mazhe whose gung-gong theme goes with the words Tubaan' kpele (vocals: kaka kaki). The dance movement was modified from a dance called Jera. Instead of Jera's belt of cowry shells, women used shells, beads, and cotton to make colorful belts of pom-poms that drew attention to the dancers shimmying midsections.

 

Later, when Rain had fallen, and crops were harvested, creative adults adapted the children's game into a full-fledged dance called Bamaaya. Among the lunga's phrases is one that, "Rain has fallen. The ground has become soft." [Lo means a swampy area, for example, a field where rice is farmed.] Bamaaya expressed the farmers' happiness at a good harvest. The dance became popular among young men who enjoyed doing it on moonlight nights.

 

As years went by, dancers began wearing increasingly outlandish costumes to amuse themselves and their audiences. Strikingly in the gender-specialized Afro-Islamic culture of the Dagomba, the Baamaaya costume suggests male cross-dressing. Some Dagombas teach that the Baamaaya costume stems from the unethical conduct of men toward women. In this account, men had to appease land gods by wearing women's clothes for the drought to end. Alhaji reports that his teachers never mentioned this story and did not hear it during his youth when he enjoyed dancing Baamaaya. He doubts its credibility. Other Dagomba teachers suggest that Bamaaya's frenetic motions derive from waving off mosquitoes by shaking hips and arms. This makes sense to me, given the story of origin, but Alhaji tends to downplay its significance.

 

In an arrangement taught by Alhaji, dancers come to the stage and form a circle in time to the relatively slow-paced music of Naa Daa. After moving through the more up-tempo sections, dancers go off stage with a return to the tune of Bamaaya. In Baamaaya, Mazhe and Nyagboli dancers display their creativity and style; they all utilize the same movement vocabulary, but everyone is "doing their own thing," so to speak. Dakɔli Kutoko is unique: dancers bump their hips against their neighbors in the circle. This section pokes fun at unmarried males saying, "Bachelors cannot farm." The message is that a farmer needs the manual labor of a big family to produce enough food to run a household.

 

The instrumentation in Baamaaya is unique among these materials: there is no part for answering lunga. Nyagboli in Baamaaya is slightly different from how it is played in Tora and Takai.

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This is the account of the history of Baamaaya told to Prof. David Locke by his teacher, the late Alhaji Abubakari Lunna.  See <http://sites.tufts.edu/dagomba/the-repertory/nvaaboli-baamaava-4/read-more/