According to Cernat, they are "urban-cosmopolitan poems, abundant in ruptures, arbitrariness, and stridency". Stridency is used in onomatopoeia in Zulu and Lamba. Stridency may be a type of phonation called harsh voice. Most European journalists were shocked by the stridency of Lumumba's speech. But Giertz was undoubtedly best known for his controversial stridency against the ordination of women.