Torday also recorded folk songs by gramophone on his successive journeys to West Africa.

Always an advocate of indigenous views, Torday found in the Kuba a sophisticated kingdom with a sumptuous artistic tradition, and in KotaPe an impressive ruler.

Furthermore, the Kuba had a dynastic history which could be related to European chronologies: it was founded in the early seventeenth century, dated in oral tradition to a known passage of Halley's comet.

On 17 March 1910, he married Gaia Rose Macdonald, a Scot, and on 19 February 1912, they had a daughter, the novelist Ursula Torday.

[2] His work was recognised in 1910 when he was awarded the Imperial Gold Medal for Science and Art by the emperor of Austria.