tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/south-african-music-19229/articlesSouth African music – The Conversation2024-01-18T15:30:58Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2209762024-01-18T15:30:58Z2024-01-18T15:30:58ZSoul Brothers: the story of a band that revolutionised South African music<p>Biographies of important South African musicians often fall into two categories: they either emerge from PhD or other university-based research, or are the fruit of dedicated digging by a fan or family member. The first kind benefit from institutional resources and support; the second from community knowledge of personal details that may be documented nowhere else. </p>
<p>Because of that very scarcity of a public record, the first kind might miss many parts of the story that can’t be checked in formal records and archives. The second risks being bent out of shape by hero-worship or fallible memory.</p>
<p>Sydney Fetsie Maluleke’s book <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/The_Life_and_Times/1qyXtQEACAAJ?hl=en">The Life and Times of the Soul Brothers</a> benefits from an author with a foot in each camp. Maluleke is a university-schooled researcher, but also an insider fan – he’s administered the band’s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/p/Soul-Brothers-100044409727019/">Facebook page</a> and comes from a family who, by his own account, were even more fanatical than he is about the legendary <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-soul-brothers-mn0000044338#biography">band</a>. </p>
<p>So the book, recently revised and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjMypAcv41g">relaunched</a> for its second edition, combines the strengths of both kinds of biography, and avoids most of their weaknesses.</p>
<h2>Who are the Soul Brothers?</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVo6lHNFkz3h-aWIaR-pa-g">Soul Brothers</a>, formed in KwaZulu-Natal province in the mid-1970s by the late vocalist <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/opinion-and-analysis/2015-07-12-obituary-david-masondo-lead-singer-of-sowetos-legendary-soul-brothers/">David Masondo</a> and keyboardist <a href="https://iono.fm/e/1373266">Black Moses Ngwenya</a> (and still working as a band today, though with new players), was the outfit that shaped the sound of South African <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/mbaqanga-music-guide">mbaqanga</a>. That’s the name of a popular genre blending traditional African vocal styles and lyrical tropes with transformed borrowings from western pop. It grew from a predominantly Zulu-speaking fanbase to dominate Black South African hit parades for more than a decade.</p>
<p>The band scored multiple gold and platinum hits, and although their most recent studio recording was more than a decade ago, Soul Brothers music still gets radio play and is popular at family and neighbourhood parties. Soul Brothers were innovators. They drew in members from across language groups, and multiple inspirations, at the very time the South African <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> regime was entrenching separation and difference. </p>
<p>Incorporating Ngwenya’s soul keyboard into what had begun as Zulu close-harmony vocals and guitar work was as startling an innovation for mbaqanga as US musician <a href="https://raycharles.com">Ray Charles</a>’ introduction of electric piano had been for American rhythm and blues. </p>
<p>Tired of exploitation by big, white-run record labels, the Soul Brothers also established their own label and studio, making them part of South Africa’s first generation of modern Black music entrepreneurs too.</p>
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<p>Maluleke’s book takes us through all these developments. Though its subtitle describes the narrative as told “through the eyes of Black Moses”, he’s careful to source what he learns, label what is contested, and acknowledge that other interpretations are possible. </p>
<p>The book’s voice is resonantly human. Though chapters are organised thematically around the lives of various artists and the group’s stages of development, the story backtracks, repeats and comes at the same subject from different angles, just as people do when they speak. At points, I found myself hankering for more direct quotes from these insider voices and less paraphrase.</p>
<h2>A new edition</h2>
<p>The book’s first edition in 2017, Maluleke tells us, left out the setbacks and disputes from the tale, something for which Ngwenya himself gently rebuked the author. So in this second edition we learn also, for example, of the professionalism that permitted spellbinding and seamless ensemble performances onstage while, behind the scenes, the principals were literally not talking to one another because of disputes over leadership and power dynamics.</p>
<p>Maluleke and his family’s obsessive fandom, meanwhile, means there’s a priceless archive of press clippings, album covers and photographs to draw on. That provides nearly 40 pages of illustrative evidence to deepen the story. </p>
<p>Along the way, there are multiple bonuses not advertised on the cover: histories of associated musicians such as the veteran <a href="https://umsakazo.bandcamp.com/album/makgona-tsohle-reggi">Makgona Tsohle Band</a>, explanations of tradition, and descriptions of township community life more than half a century ago. Though the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/township-South-Africa">townships</a> – segregated and impoverished areas for black workers removed from the “white” cities – had been designed by apartheid, residents built their own rich networks of solidarity, self-help and shared culture. Music was one of its <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Soweto_Blues.html?id=_fwkCIKoTpgC&redir_esc=y">pillars</a>. </p>
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<p>For me, a big surprise was learning that the young Ngwenya – regarded today as South Africa’s finest mbaqanga keyboardist – was inspired back in the 1960s by watching the rehearsals of the band Durban Expressions, whose keyboardist became one of the country’s finest jazz players: the late <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/bheki-mseleku-south-african-jazz-pianist-932017.html">Bheki Mseleku</a>. </p>
<p>All those are strengths that could make the book a storehouse of inspiration for music scholars. Each one of its details and detours could inspire a study of its own.</p>
<h2>Some flaws</h2>
<p>The book’s flaws, where they exist, emerge from the strains of producing a book on a shoestring budget. Maluleke, quoting Nigerian writer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chinua-Achebe">Chinua Achebe</a>, wrote it because he was determined the history of lions must not be written by the hunters alone. The book did have one editor: veteran broadcaster and popular music expert Max Mojapelo, whose encyclopaedic industry knowledge no doubt enriched the history. </p>
<p>But it needed another, more prosaic kind of editor as well: a copy editor. </p>
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<p>There are rather too many typographical errors and inconsistencies in, for example, the use of italics for song and album titles. Some date references are clearly unrevised from the 2017 edition. And there is no index; that makes the contents less accessible. </p>
<h2>Hugely important story</h2>
<p>Yet, if Maluleke had waited until more resources were available, he – and we – might still be waiting. A story hugely important for South African popular music history would have remained largely untold. He made the right choice. </p>
<p>Every music fan eager to understand how the “indestructible sound of Soweto” was born and shaped is in his debt.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220976/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The book tells the inside story of how they changed the sound of urban pop.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2176982023-11-29T13:48:41Z2023-11-29T13:48:41ZOpera in Cape Town: critics trace how a colonial art form was reinvented as African<p><em>Many people thought that classical opera in South Africa – regarded as a western, colonial art form that was the preserve of white people during <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> – would die with democracy in 1994. Instead the opposite happened. Black singers emerged as the new stars and the format of opera began to be Africanised for new audiences. Critics mapped this transformation as Cape Town established itself as a hotbed of the new opera. One such critic was Wayne Muller, who became an academic and wrote a <a href="https://scholar.sun.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/0c2c61d1-d674-42e8-a4ac-8175d6f423bd/content">PhD</a> on the view of these changes. Now he has a <a href="https://www.google.co.za/books/edition/Opera_in_Cape_Town_The_Critic_s_Voice/mT3REAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0">book</a> on the subject called Opera in Cape Town: The Critic’s Voice. We asked him five questions.</em></p>
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<h2>How was opera established in South Africa?</h2>
<p>Like most things western European, opera in South Africa is part of a colonial legacy. Sources – from various journal articles and the South African Music Encyclopaedia (1979-1986) – refer to the early 1800s as the time when opera came to South Africa via Cape Town. </p>
<p>Travelling theatre companies from Europe staged mostly lighter operas, such as French <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/opera-comique">opéra comique</a>. As time went by, more of these theatre companies came to Cape Town and travelled to the interior of the country. Eventually some of these artists and producers immigrated to South African, and so local opera production started to take shape. </p>
<p>In 1831, German composer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carl-Maria-von-Weber">Carl Maria von Weber</a>’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Der-Freischutz">Der Freischütz</a> was performed in Cape Town and billed in a newspaper, The South African Commercial Advertiser, as the first “serious” locally produced opera. </p>
<p>Since the early 1800s there has been a process of the professionalisation of opera, which can be seen, for instance, in the building of theatres and the training of opera singers at tertiary level. And, to put it simply, in this way opera became established and evolved as the art form that is performed in South Africa today.</p>
<h2>How did critics track opera’s transformation?</h2>
<p>My research on opera in post-apartheid South Africa looked particularly at how two Cape Town daily newspapers reported on the transformation of opera from the middle 1980s when apartheid was starting to unravel. I studied reviews of productions, news reports and other articles. Initially one sees a <a href="https://scholar.sun.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/0c2c61d1-d674-42e8-a4ac-8175d6f423bd/content">survivalist approach</a> in arts reportage that highlighted a political “attack” on western art forms and questioned the place of indigenous art within the new democracy. Soon it became about “how do we ensure the survival of opera while doing the politically correct thing of giving indigenous music the same status”. </p>
<p>Also, critics expressed (albeit subtly) surprise at the emergence of black opera singers because the apartheid narrative had been that opera was the domain of white South Africans. Eventually in classical music and opera, critics’ writing started showing an embrace of a hybrid form of western classical and indigenous music that came about in opera during the 1990s. Looking at the past 30 years, it seemed that opera critics (writing mostly for a white readership) negotiated with their readers for an acceptance of emerging operatic aesthetics and expressions that were distinctly African.</p>
<h2>How did opera become “Africanised”?</h2>
<p>In the book I chart how opera became South African opera. “Africanisation” has been a process in which opera was made relevant to local South African audiences. <a href="https://scholar.sun.ac.za/items/ce3d5eab-282d-4cd9-96f6-14d0b4aef2fa">Some scholars</a> also refer to this as the indigenisation of opera. Already during the apartheid era, operas were translated into English and Afrikaans as a means of localising them. But the setting and music remained European in nature. Following translation, changing the <a href="https://www.nipai.org/post/mise-en-scene-on-stage">mise-en-scène</a> from Europe to local settings became a means of “Africanisation”. A good example is a 1997 production of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giacomo-Puccini">Italian composer Giacomo Puccini</a>’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/La-Boheme-opera-by-Puccini">La Bohème</a>. It was renamed <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Shapers-Boheme-Noir-Giacomo-Puccini/dp/B000055XBB">La Bohème Noir</a> (black) and was set in the township of Soweto instead of Paris. Now the staging was set in a South African context, but the music was still European. </p>
<p>By the early 2000s, “Africanised” productions not only had a local setting, but the original music was merged with indigenous music and indigenous instruments were also included, such as in productions of Italian composer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giuseppe-Verdi">Giuseppe Verdi</a>’s Macbeth and English composer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Purcell">Henry Purcell</a>’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dido-and-Aeneas-opera-by-Purcell">Dido and Aeneas</a>. Later, themes were adapted to be locally relevant, such as a version of Hungarian composer <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Franz-Lehar">Franz Lehár</a>’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Merry-Widow-operetta-by-Lehar">The Merry Widow</a>, set in an imagined African state with new character names and retitled <a href="https://www.classictic.com/en/the-merry-widow-of-malagawi-cape-town-opera/31771/">The Merry Widow of Malagawi</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mzilikazi-khumalo-iconic-composer-who-defied-apartheid-odds-to-leave-a-rich-legacy-163283">Mzilikazi Khumalo: iconic composer who defied apartheid odds to leave a rich legacy</a>
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<p>But the most pertinent “Africanisation” of the operatic genre has been the composition of new South African operas with original music and stories – like South African composer <a href="https://theconversation.com/mzilikazi-khumalo-iconic-composer-who-defied-apartheid-odds-to-leave-a-rich-legacy-163283">Mzilikazi Khumalo</a>’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13696815.2015.1049245">Princess Magogo kaDinuzulu</a>. Since 1995, there have been more than 20 South African operas performed in the country, and I think each of them in their own way represent a distinct way of reinterpreting opera within a (South) African context.</p>
<p>Concurrently, we saw a transformation in opera with the emergence of black opera singers. The <a href="https://scholar.sun.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/0c2c61d1-d674-42e8-a4ac-8175d6f423bd/content">Choral Training Programme</a> at the now defunct Cape Performing Arts Board (known as Capab) was established in 1993 and played a key role in providing vocal training, particularly to black singers, as a means of enabling transformation in opera. And since then, we have seen many black singers embracing opera, with the likes of <a href="https://theconversation.com/pretty-yende-a-south-african-opera-star-with-a-voice-that-shatters-glass-ceilings-200559">Pretty Yende</a> and <a href="https://www.levysekgapane.com/levy-sekgapane.html">Levy Sekgapane</a> becoming star singers in the big opera houses of the world. </p>
<h2>How reliable are just a few critics in telling history?</h2>
<p>I believe it is a reliable historical perspective if one qualifies that it is an historical account from that specific perspective. It can never be a 360-degree type of history (and the book does not claim this). There are other ways of looking at and interpreting sources on opera that could also constitute a history. However, what I have found is that our archives are inadequate to write a “full” history and much research still needs to be done from other perspectives and sources. So, this book is rather a means of capturing the historical patterns and trends in opera that have been documented by opera critics in newspapers – journalism being the first rough draft of history, as the <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/08/on-the-trail-of-the-question-who-first-said-or-wrote-that-journalism-is-the-first-rough-draft-of-history.html">phrase</a> goes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217698/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wayne Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new book explores how Cape Town became a hub for African opera.Wayne Muller, Publications Editor / Research Fellow (Africa Open Institute for Music, Research and Innovation), Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2135992023-10-09T13:32:37Z2023-10-09T13:32:37ZSho Madjozi: the pop star using traditional culture to shape a fresh identity for young South Africans<p>South African rapper <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/directory/sho-madjozi">Sho Madjozi</a> is a bold and colourful presence in pop culture, as famous for her catchy lyrics as for using traditional clothing and dance in a fresh way. </p>
<p>The musician, actress and poet is also one of very few young South African artists working in a minority language, Xitsonga. With 12 official languages in South Africa, Xitsonga is the first language of only about <a href="https://www.statssa.gov.za/census/census_2011/census_products/Census_2011_Census_in_brief.pdf#page=29">4.5%</a> of the population, mostly in the rural northern province of the country called Limpopo. The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tsonga">Tsonga people</a> also live in neighbouring Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Eswatini.</p>
<p>Yet, in 2019, “<a href="https://twitter.com/shomadjozi/status/1367138022676963329?s=61&t=tS_HwqEZjVfiFydTA2hItQ">village girl</a>” Sho Madjozi burst onto the world stage with her hit song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9bGITkIHmM">John Cena</a>, winning a <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/tshisa-live/tshisa-live/2019-06-24-watch-halala-sho-madjozi-bags-a-bet/">BET award</a> in the US for Best International Newcomer. By 2021 she had established herself as <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/entertainment/2019-06-02-sho-madjozi-wins-big-at-sama25/">best female artist</a> at the South African Music Awards.</p>
<p>But Sho Madjozi is about more than music. She’s also about setting trends – through reinventing Tsonga costume, hairstyles and dance. She’s done this in a way that helps shape her region’s cultural identity. </p>
<p>Cultural identity is not something that’s fixed. Identities change, transcending time, place and history. Sho Madjozi shows how this happens when she mixes the authentic culture of the Tsonga people with popular global culture to produce a unique – or hybrid – identity and performance style.</p>
<p>We recently published a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21681392.2023.2227293?scroll=top">research paper</a> that analyses this. We place her as an artist whose work demonstrates a fascinating interface between the “authentic” (Tsonga culture) and the “hybrid” (an innovative new voice, with innovation and novelty being central to the global culture industries).</p>
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<p>We conclude that by merging popular and traditional cultures, Sho Madjozi is the latest in a long line of young African artists who help shape youth culture identity. In the process she shines a light on a lesser-known ethnic group, keeping traditional knowledge alive so that others may learn from it and be inspired by it. </p>
<h2>Who is Sho Madjozi?</h2>
<p>Sho Madjozi was born Maya Christinah Xichavo Wegerif, from a biracial union between her Swedish father and Tsonga mother. This provides a further fascinating framework for the idea of authenticity and hybridity in her work. </p>
<p>In South Africa, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-slavery-and-early-colonisation-south-africa">colonialism</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> suppressed indigenous cultures. Apartheid, introduced by a white-minority government, was a policy based on separate development for different racially categorised people. The <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01828/05lv01829/06lv01884.htm">law</a> banned sexual relations between people categorised as black and white. Yet people fell in love across the colour lines. </p>
<p>Sho Madjozi’s mixed parentage creates a hybrid form of identity because of historical processes of cultural contact, transformation and change among different peoples of the world. </p>
<p>As if to underscore the in-betweenness of her cultural heritage, a considerable part of her youth and childhood was spent in Senegal in west Africa. This also demonstrates the notion of circulation that characterises the contemporary <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/17/world/africa/who-are-afropolitans/index.html">Afropolitan</a> (a generation that is both African and cosmopolitan). </p>
<p>Sho Madjozi chose proudly to adopt a Tsonga signature style in her stage career. She <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/entertainment/sho-madjozi-it-makes-sense-for-me-to-rap-in-xitsonga-10990362">says</a> that, for her, blackness means “not erasing everything that I am … and never accepting a form of beauty where it’s as far away from me as possible”.</p>
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<p>She makes it clear that a pure native identity is simply no longer available. In its place comes a moving map of cultural images and an ever-changing sense of self.</p>
<h2>Costume, hair and dance</h2>
<p>Characteristically, Sho Madjozi adapts and reinterprets the Tsonga tinguvu skirt, commonly called the <a href="https://makotis.com/xibelani/">xibelani skirt</a> as it’s used to perform the traditional <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsOJ6VP1e84">xibelani dance</a>. The xibelani skirt is gathered in the waist, accentuated at the top of the hips and consists of many layers of fabric that create a distinctive volume when the wearer dances in it. </p>
<p>Sho Madjozi <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/the-history-of-the-xibelani-a-look-behind-sjo-madjozis-signature-look-20200226#">reinterprets</a> this skirt. She pairs it with modern fashion items, sometimes shortening it or making it longer, reinventing its form. This contrasts and merges indigenous culture with fashion, tradition with modernity, and the local with the global. </p>
<p>She also incorporates vibrant Tsonga colours (pinks, yellows, purples, blues and greens) in her creative reinterpretations of costume. She does the same with her <a href="https://briefly.co.za/entertainment/celebrities/158996-sho-madjozis-iconic-hairstyles-4-stunning-earned-john-cena-hitmaker-queen-colourful-hair/">hair</a>, weaving bright Tsonga colours into it, adorning it with beads, experimenting with traditional accessories in her cornrows. </p>
<p>The xibelani <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsOJ6VP1e84">dance</a> is also central to Sho Madjozi’s act. It’s native to Tsonga women, where girls learn it to celebrate their heritage and perform it on special occasions. Xibelani means “hitting to the rhythm”. The dancer shakes their hips, exaggerated by the skirt, with the whole body following. This is often accompanied by hand clapping and whistling.</p>
<p>Sho Madjozi’s colourful and iconic redesigns of Tsonga costume are signs of what it means to be Tsonga in southern Africa today. She uses popular urban youth culture to spread Tsonga xibelani culture in a national space. </p>
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<p>She does so in a time when young South Africans often find themselves grappling to retain traditional cultural values in an ever-changing and fast-paced globalising world. </p>
<h2>Why this matters</h2>
<p>Traditional costume often represents old ways that resist change. Sho Madjozi’s innovations around xibelani speak differently. Through her performances, social media image and public profile, she rises above conventional attitudes that often perceive minority ethnic groups as the conservative gatekeepers of unchanging cultures. </p>
<p>She presents Tsonga tradition and culture at the cutting edge of positive identity formation. She does so in ways that inspire, attract and convince other young South Africans to embrace local cultures in their own construction of urban identities.</p>
<p>She acts as a cultural agent for the transmission of positive change and values across ethnic, national and international boundaries. </p>
<p>Sho Madjozi embodies the words of <a href="https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/taiye-selasi">Taiye Selasi</a>, the young British-born, US-based writer, photographer and cultural activist of Nigerian and Ghanaian origin. Selasi <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/03/27/175466870/debut-novel-tackles-african-immigrant-stereotypes">says</a>: </p>
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<p>What distinguishes (Afropolitans) is a willingness to complicate Africa … we seek to comprehend the cultural complexity, to honour the intellectual and spiritual legacy, and to sustain our parents’ cultures.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213599/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Costume, hair and dance allow her to modernise Tsonga culture – and help shape youth identity.Owen Seda, Associate Professor in Performing Arts, Tshwane University of TechnologyMotshidisi Manyeneng, Lecturer in Costume Theory and theatre costumer, Tshwane University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2009372023-03-23T09:46:45Z2023-03-23T09:46:45ZBowscapes review: album celebrates new traditions in South Africa’s ancient bow music<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514190/original/file-20230308-26-zg13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The late musician Madosini playing the umrhube mouthbow.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oupa Bopape/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/new-practices-reinvent-traditions-in-bow-music-56095">Musical bows</a> are among the oldest instruments in southern Africa. Musicologists think the “ping” a bowstring makes when an arrow is released <a href="https://oxfordre.com/anthropology/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.001.0001/acrefore-9780190854584-e-561;jsessionid=89EDD8E587584910643F9A48478BD544?rskey=PoaaPK&result=101">inspired early hunters</a> (as far back as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/khoisan">Khoi and San</a> nations) to use it for music-making in ritual and, later, other contexts.</p>
<p>The passing, in 2022, of South Africa’s bow virtuoso <a href="https://theconversation.com/madosini-a-south-african-national-treasure-whose-music-kept-a-rich-history-alive-197736">Latozi “Madosini” Mpahleni</a> reminded South Africans of traditional bow music’s significance in the region’s intangible cultural heritage.</p>
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<p>When you pluck, strike or stroke the string of a musical bow, you get not only one note but extra sounds (called overtones), created by the air vibrating around it. Using various techniques – such as adding a gourd resonator, or placing the end of the bow in their mouths – bow players can amplify and manipulate those sounds to shape complex music. </p>
<p>The work of veteran and younger bow musicians, scholars and audiences all keep these traditions alive and stimulate new repertoire. But the fascination bow music holds for the international New Music community (modern, innovative concert composers), and the options for using electronic composing techniques with bow sounds, have been less documented. </p>
<p>Now a new compilation CD, Bow Project 2: Bowscapes, brings that impact to the fore. Released by the <a href="https://aoinstitute.ac.za">Africa Open Institute</a> for Music Innovation and Research at Stellenbosch University, its 21 newly-composed electronic tracks illustrate how heritage and innovation can interact in “traditional” music. And how composers, whether inside or outside its communities of origin, should treat it. </p>
<h2>Tribute to Jürgen Bräuninger</h2>
<p>Bowscapes is a tribute to the late German-born, South African-based composer and music professor <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/south-african-musical-composer-professor-juergen-braeuninger-dies-22832424">Jürgen Bräuninger</a>, who died in 2019. Bräuninger advocated innovation in composing and playing. When I interviewed some of the composers who had contributed tracks to the album for this review, it became clear how influential working with him had been.</p>
<p>South African composer <a href="https://www.njabulophungula.com">Njabulo Phungula</a>, a former student of Bräuninger, recalls:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Jürgen would encourage me to be more ‘curious’ in my musical explorations … much of my recent music has to do with creating seemingly incompatible musical ideas and contexts in which they make sense, appealing to that curiosity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A longtime collaborator, Netherlands-based <a href="https://luchoutkamp.nl">Luc Houtcamp</a>, with musician and bow scholar <a href="https://soa.ukzn.ac.za/staff-profile/music/sazi-dlamini/">Sazi Dlamini</a> and poet <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/prof-ari-sitas">Ari Sitas</a>, created their work because, says Sitas, “We owed it to Jürgen.”</p>
<p>South African composer <a href="http://www.michaelblake.co.za/biography">Michael Blake</a>, professor at Africa Open, co-ordinated the album as well as contributing a track. He had helmed the first <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2989/18121004.2016.1267950">Bow Project</a> album in 2010, a collection of mostly string quartet works honouring the musicianship of traditional bow master the late <a href="https://iamtranscriptions.org/performers/mrs-nofinishi-dywili/">NoFinishi Dywili</a>. To that, Bräuninger contributed the only electronic soundscape, Tsiki’s Got a Headache, which opens this new recording. Blake told me that after Bräuninger’s death he was looking for a way to honour him: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I thought back to that ‘bowscape’, as he called it, and started imagining a whole CD … of new ones.</p>
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<p>Blake contacted composers across the world, sending South African bow samples on request. In the end, he had 21 short electronic pieces, half from South Africa and half from places as diverse as Mozambique, Nigeria, Mexico, Germany, Uruguay, the Faroe Islands and more. </p>
<h2>Bow music and struggle music</h2>
<p>On the CD, those two groups of composers sit on either side of an extended centrepiece: Walking Song by Dlamini, Houtcamp and Sitas. Its lyrics are based on verses from <a href="https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/anti-apartheid-struggle-south-africa-1912-1992/">struggle era</a> trade unionist and poet <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/alfred-temba-qabula">Alfred Temba Qabula</a>. </p>
<p>Walking Song pays homage to two traditions: bow music and <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-struggle-songs-against-apartheid-come-from-a-long-tradition-of-resistance-192425">struggle music</a>. Diverse musicians, including accomplished bow players, used music as part of their activism against apartheid, as individuals or in trade union and political party choirs and theatre groups.</p>
<p>Sitas explains that the three were determined that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We were not going to use the bow as a decoration or quotation – we were going to compose with it.</p>
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<p>He sought permission from Qabula’s daughter to add contemporary allusions to the poem.</p>
<h2>Composing with bow</h2>
<p>Those processes indicate what went into making the album. Contributors acknowledged bow music as a legitimate compositional language, not an exotic ornament to be <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/12471/chapter-abstract/162875150?redirectedFrom=fulltext">appropriated</a>. Conversations about who “owns” and has the right to work with traditional music have been an important part of the decolonisation debate. South African composer, performer and scholar <a href="https://www.neosong.net">Neo Muyanga</a>, who made the track uNontoUzavunywa, reflects that borrowing is unavoidable, because cultural workers have always drawn from older music to convey new and sometimes subversive messages. But “it’s important to announce our sources and pay homage to them in every way possible.” </p>
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<p>Muyanga’s work flips the gender message of a song from another bow maestro, <a href="https://herri.org.za/1/michael-blake/">Mantombi Matotiyana</a>. He says that when she first came across that song, “all power and ownership were invariably presumed to vest in the man”.</p>
<p>Phungula’s track Montage layers and contrasts the isolation of studio electronic composing with “an element that contained a multitude of sounds” – a family wedding recording he had made some years earlier. It invokes the spirit of community music-making in which bow traditions are rooted. </p>
<p>In many such communities, women (such as Madosini, Dyiwili and Matotiyana) remain the leading composers and performers. Three women composers feature on the album: London-born <a href="https://www.galinajuritz.com">Galina Juritz</a>, <a href="https://www.christinaoorebeek.com">Christina Oorebeek</a> from the US and South African <a href="http://www.carastacey.com">Cara Stacey</a>. </p>
<h2>Experimentation</h2>
<p>Stacey, herself a bow player, here applies guitar effects to the instrument: “Bows were earlier; guitars came in and replaced them. I liked the idea of flipping that and replacing the guitar … with bows.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-practices-reinvent-traditions-in-bow-music-56095">New practices reinvent traditions in bow music</a>
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<p>But her cyclical track, Rounds, also interrogates the stereotype that “tradition” and its exponents are “static or fixed in any way. My experience from my research in Eswatini and with different bow players is that they’re keen to experiment. They already do experiment – and did in the past.”</p>
<p>Blake relishes the album’s diversity of approaches, languages and sounds. In the community of music-makers he’s drawn together, Bowscapes reflects both the community roots of bow music and the collaborative processes Bräuninger fostered. </p>
<p><em>The CD is available from <a href="https://aoinstitute.ac.za">Africa Open</a> and will soon be available as a download</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Composers are keeping bow music alive through electronic music and other experiments.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1940872022-12-06T13:13:46Z2022-12-06T13:13:46ZMusic streaming in South Africa – new survey reveals musicians get a raw deal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/494168/original/file-20221108-19-6x725n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ihor Melnyk/Getty Images</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Musicians worldwide have been placing their tracks with global streaming platforms such as <a href="https://www.spotify.com/ng/free/">Spotify</a> for many years. South African musicians, however, have <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-lockdown-live-streams-working-for-south-africas-musicians-144946">reported</a> only sparse earnings from streaming music online. </p>
<p>When our <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-lockdown-live-streams-working-for-south-africas-musicians-144946">2020 survey</a> revealed this, we wondered if part of the reason was inexperience. At the time, COVID lockdowns had made live performances impossible, driving many South African musicians to try what looked like an alternative revenue stream.</p>
<p>In 2022 we broadened and deepened that research. And we discovered that earnings from music streaming remained poor. Further, <a href="https://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/doc_details.jsp?doc_id=540735">major</a> <a href="https://grassrootsmusicnetwork.org/live-streaming-music-uk-a-report-for-musicians/">international</a> <a href="https://grassrootsmusicnetwork.org/live-streaming-music-uk-a-report-for-musicians/">studies</a> were also now <a href="https://grassrootsmusicnetwork.org/live-streaming-music-uk-a-report-for-musicians/">demonstrating</a> the same earnings trend everywhere. </p>
<p>Those studies suggested that, without urgent reform, the entire streaming system was rigged against musicians. And genres and musicians on the periphery of the western-dominated music industry were hit hardest. </p>
<p>We heard from 279 music role players – artists, venues and local platforms – and took the international findings on board. The <a href="https://iksafrica.com/reports/Digital-Futures-Two-Taking-Music-Online-in-South-Africa.pdf">full report</a>, Digital Futures 2 Taking Music Online in South Africa, confirms, with much more nuance, that our 2020 findings were correct. </p>
<p>A much bigger sample spread across all provinces demonstrated that South African musicians weren’t beginners in the world of streaming: 77% of respondents had some involvement even before COVID struck. Just over 40% used methods including site analytics to monitor their business performance. But despite this, and despite the data also showing improved audiences and that more artists now owned their streaming rights, the earnings picture remained just as bleak.</p>
<p>“Poor” or “very poor” was how 63% of respondents rated their earnings. At best, streaming provided a supplement to other music-related earnings such as live performance or hiring out equipment. At worst it was a drain on them – because of platform fees. Without sponsorship, streaming would be impossible for most.</p>
<h2>Musicians are the losers</h2>
<p>South Africa’s musicians pay a dollar-equivalent fee to post their music on an international platform. They are allocated a payment whenever a track is streamed. But each stream is at best a few hundredths of a US cent, depending on the platform. What listeners pay doesn’t go directly to the artist. It goes into a global pot and is then allocated – after platform service fees are deducted. Allocations are made via complex algorithms based on many factors, including the artist’s existing share of the market and where their listeners are based.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-lockdown-live-streams-working-for-south-africas-musicians-144946">Are lockdown live streams working for South Africa's musicians?</a>
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<p>South African artists find themselves in the same boat as their international counterparts, even those in countries with far stronger digital infrastructures. The <a href="https://www.wipo.int/portal/en/index.html">World Intellectual Property Organization</a> goes as far as to suggest that streaming, currently controlled by a handful of global platforms, is corroding the ecosystem that nurtures music creativity. </p>
<p>Despite rising platform and label revenue from streaming, “there has been no trickle-down to performers,” the organisation <a href="https://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/doc_details.jsp?doc_id=540735">says</a>.</p>
<h2>Even worse in South Africa</h2>
<p>In South Africa, these problems are intensified by a massive <a href="http://www.digitaldividecouncil.com/what-is-the-digital-divide/">digital divide</a> and an undeveloped policy environment. Official policy on copyright – including the proposed <a href="https://static.pmg.org.za/2/220608B13D-CopyRight-2017_Final.pdf">Copyright Amendment Bill</a> – does not even discuss engagement with the dominant global platforms. Neither does it address the possibility of new forms of royalty designed for streaming rather than broadcast or publication. </p>
<p>South African audiences lack easy, affordable digital access. Production and the constant online promotional engagement needed by musicians are constrained by the same circumstances. </p>
<p>Survey respondents, meanwhile, expressed urgent concern about digital piracy, theft of intellectual property, illicit sharing and how social media companies “work off our original music”. Load-shedding, regularly scheduled power cuts due to a creaking power infrastructure, was often mentioned. Power problems particularly affect music whose largest potential audiences are in townships (often underdeveloped urban areas populated by black South Africans) or rural areas. One wrote: “Some of my fans don’t understand the streaming technology; some don’t have phones that allow them to stream.” Another: “Poor network and load-shedding compromise production.”</p>
<p>Our conclusion is that unless change happens, streaming offers a very limited future for South African musicians. </p>
<h2>What’s needed</h2>
<p>Respondents called for faster official action on bridging the digital divide and on developing other demand-side stimuli for the South African music industry. It is not enough to assist music creators (the supply side) if audiences cannot afford or access their products. Government should collaborate with the royalty collection agencies to engage with global platforms, respondents said. </p>
<p>Longstanding discontents around the efficient collection and disbursement of royalties in South Africa are now joined by an urgent need for policy engagement with global platforms to seek more equitable payment regimes. (Depressingly, though, collection agencies and labels were still characterised as poor communicators with musicians, as they had been in 2020.)</p>
<p>The musicians and music-providers who responded to this survey demonstrated solid practical experience in managing their activities. They acknowledged that “the world is changing fast”. They named areas where they would welcome further training and information, because “we need to create more consistently, regardless of the landscape of the country’s support.”</p>
<p>One striking and positive finding was about how respondents saw their reasons for streaming. In thematic analysis of all the open responses, a sense of social mission and purpose constantly recurred: inspiring listeners; providing hope; “expressing feelings that people are afraid to express”; and advocating for the beauty of Africa’s music heritage. Our respondents know they may be on their own and may not make money from posting music online, but they do it “not for seeking attention or likes, but to share our ghetto experiences and stories.”</p>
<p>But musicians need to eat in order to tell their stories. National training and demand-side interventions can help, but the problems of musicians with the streaming system are global and systemic, and need attention from policymakers on that level too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194087/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell leads the research team at IKS Cultural Consulting which conducted the survey. Her contract work there on this project was funded by Concerts SA</span></em></p>New survey shows poor earnings from music streaming made worse by the digital divide and a lack of policy.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1943612022-11-16T13:10:05Z2022-11-16T13:10:05ZAsake, the breakout pop star from Nigeria who owned 2022<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495118/original/file-20221114-17-tmcwac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Asake live in Atlanta in the US in 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paras Griffin/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/directory/asake">Asake’s</a> first commercial releases, beginning with the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B07v379B8a0">Lady</a> in 2020, didn’t really portend a seismic shift in Nigeria’s teeming <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-nigeria-to-the-world-afrobeats-is-having-a-global-moment-179910">Afrobeats scene</a>. The 27-year-old genre-blending Nigerian singer and rapper has a tongue-in-cheek delivery and jocular persona. He writes nonsensical, self-deprecating rhymes with hip-hop influenced consumerist themes and could easily be mistaken for a less threatening <a href="https://www.instagram.com/nairamarley/">Naira Marley</a> – a street savvy Afrobeats mainstay-wannabe.</p>
<p>And then, in September 2022, came his scorching 30-minute long album, <a href="https://www.complex.com/music/asake-mr-money-with-the-vibe-album-stream">Mr. Money With The Vibe</a>. It’s an engrossing potpourri of music styles, voices and attitudes that reveal a breadth of ambition that music lovers have not seen in a long time. His rise to global reckoning was sealed by sold out shows in Atlanta and London and a collaboration with Nigerian singer <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/node/10353">Tiwa Savage</a> on the hit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgeTnpTkzI0">Loaded</a>.</p>
<p>Currently signed to Afrobeats linchpin <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/21/africa/olamide-nigeria-music-label-spc-intl/index.html">Olamide’s</a> Empire-distributed <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/directory/ybnl-records">YBNL label</a>, which is also home to the equally talented <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/interview-afrobeats-star-fireboy-dml">Fireboy DML</a>, Asake finds himself in quite impressive company. Olamide himself is pretty adept in blending the sonic elements that form the basis of Asake’s own creative template.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-dance-music-craze-amapiano-could-conquer-the-world-if-its-stars-step-up-192417">South Africa's dance music craze, amapiano, could conquer the world – if its stars step up</a>
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<p>It seems Asake, a Lagosian, is also embracing <a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-house-of-amapiano/">amapiano</a>, the South African house music subgenre taking the world <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-dance-music-craze-amapiano-could-conquer-the-world-if-its-stars-step-up-192417">by storm</a>. Characterised by jazzy, sometimes bluesy, house grooves punctuated by frequent log drum infusions, amapiano has spread across the continent and is redefining and re-energising popular dance music. Asake is adding his own distinctive chameleonic qualities to it. </p>
<p>His sweeping take on Afrobeats, <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/africa/nigeria/articles/the-music-lovers-guide-to-fuji-music/">fuji</a>, amapiano, Lagosian street slang and the urban sounds of black America has an immediate impact as an astonishing blast of creativity.</p>
<h2>Who is Asake?</h2>
<p>Born Ahmed Ololade, Asake is a graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University drama department who burst into the music scene without apparent warning. Asake is actually his mother’s name. He is also a highly inventive student of Nigeria’s Yoruba language, his main medium of expression. </p>
<p>He uses slang fresh from the streets coupled with expressions popularised by fuji (an Islam-inflected south-west Nigeria form of popular music) and the entire Isale Eko (downtown Lagos) army of street-dwelling miscreants. Asake brazenly embraces urban “hood” culture and its seductive promise of social rebellion. Yet at the same time, he is not the kind of guy moms loathe because he’s also endowed with a winning comic gift and bad-boy-on-the-mend sort of aura.</p>
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<p>Nigerian megastar <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-burna-boy-set-the-world-alight-with-his-mixed-brew-of-influences-188080">Burna Boy</a> was quick to partner on a remix of Asake’s Afrobeats-cum-amapiano track <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WU__JQuB8g">Sungba</a>, but didn’t bring anything new to the table apart from his certified hit-making status and brooding sense of menace. Asake, on the other hand, is a live wire linguistic conduit, spicing up Yoruba street lingo with the dexterity of a street urchin, complete with witty banter and double meanings. </p>
<h2>Is his debut album any good?</h2>
<p>Songs such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MefXQvGTYtE">Peace Be Unto You</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrIP_igi76U">Terminator</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXl5dPuiJa0">Joha</a> only lavishly build on the eruptive momentum of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbmKD-4Zr4Q">Organise</a>, the opening track of Mr. Money With The Vibe. The album’s blistering pace is one of its most distinctive features, followed by its seamless splicing (editing). Pace and sequencing are the key elements of this exquisite piece of sonic art.</p>
<p>Building from this is Asake’s mastery of a rich range of music styles, from amapiano and Afrobeats to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/rhythm-and-blues">R&B</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/hip-hop">hip-hop</a> and <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/jamaica-dub-music-reggae-electronic-music-7857092/">Jamaican dub</a>. He burns through these illustrious music archives at great speed and, surprisingly, with some depth. He’s able to convert gospel-sounding ditties into profane and rabble-rousing secular anthems. This ability is one of the secrets of the album’s somewhat unexpected artistic success.</p>
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<p>Most of Asake’s videos off the album are shot by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/boy_director/?hl=en">TG Omori</a>, the intriguingly <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/auteur-theory">auteurish</a> cinematographer and <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/nigerian-music-videos-tg-omori-interview-breathing-new-life/">leading</a> West African music video director. They try to capture the frenetic pace and layering of the songs. The scenes are eclectic and quirky by turns. Joha appears shot in the arid expanses of Arizona or some such place. Peace Be Unto You sweeps up Lagos’s sprawling urban chaos and intensity. Terminator offers a slow burning account of simmering foreboding, sassiness and sexual gratification. Through it all, Asake adopts a broad selection of personas and roles.</p>
<h2>Beyond amapiano</h2>
<p>When South African amapiano stars such as <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/rileyvansteward/2022/10/02/dbn-gogo-is-a-global-disc-jockey-on-genres-edge/">DBN Gogo</a> and <a href="https://briefly.co.za/48879-all-major-league-djz.html">Major League DJz</a> heard Mr. Money With The Vibe, they <a href="https://theyanos.co.za/2022/09/amapiano-artists-react-to-nigerian-star-asakes-amapiano-album/">expressed</a> their awe and admiration. Major League DJz tweeted that “Asake is amapiano”. DBN Gogo went as far as to say the album was so good that South African amapiano musicians had to come together to fend off the formidable Nigerian challenge. Obviously, she’s at a loss regarding Asake’s diversity of cultural and musical inspirations.</p>
<p>Indeed, Asake can be difficult to categorise. He gleefully avails himself of cultural resources and archives with confidence, panache and skill.</p>
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<p>Asake’s free-wheeling sonic eclecticism might be the key to his meteoric success. Joyous choral singing, ebullient fuji trimmings, repurposed iconic R&B grooves, street patois, good natured urban hooliganism, immediacy and openness also need to be added into the already intriguing mix. Surely, this is all beyond ordinary amapiano. And that makes it all the more appealing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194361/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation but the views expressed in this article do not represent those of the Mellon Foundation or the University of Cape Town. </span></em></p>The album Mr. Money With The Vibe, with its amapiano influences, is just 30 minutes long but it speaks volumes about Asake’s talents.Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1924172022-11-02T14:55:15Z2022-11-02T14:55:15ZSouth Africa’s dance music craze, amapiano, could conquer the world – if its stars step up<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491388/original/file-20221024-11269-guheg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kamo Mphela performs at the First Annual South African Amapiano Music Awards in 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oupa Bopape/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There’s a lot of hype around <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/amapiano-genre-house-south-africa-1191523/">amapiano</a>. The South African dance music genre has dominated dancefloors since 2019, spreading from South Africa to West Africa and now to <a href="https://www.beatportal.com/features/how-amapiano-conquered-the-world/">the world</a>. But it’s time to peer through the hype and see if amapiano is able to transition from a cloistered club scene onto a truly global stage in terms of performance strength, conviction and credibility.</p>
<p>Kabza de Small, DJ Maphorisa, Major League DJz, DBN Gogo, Lady Du … the list of amapiano stars is growing. Undoubtedly, though, there are concerns regarding the live performances of many. Beyond the gimmicks of slick studio technology and computer wizardry, it appears that many really struggle to make an impact on stage.
Surely, the questions of stage presence, control and frontsperson desirability are significant in any music genre’s ultimate global success. Just ask US stars <a href="https://theconversation.com/beyonce-has-helped-usher-in-a-renaissance-for-african-artists-188099">Beyoncé</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lady-Gaga">Lady Gaga</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rihanna">Rihanna</a> or Nigeria’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-burna-boy-set-the-world-alight-with-his-mixed-brew-of-influences-188080">Burna Boy</a>.</p>
<p>Amapiano’s DIY sensibilities, freshness and underdog status are some of its apparent heartwarming qualities. However, amapiano musicians rarely perform with live bands. Their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isYm52A9WFQ">globally</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbYfjstimOo">streamed</a> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjs36oqGLPA">performances</a> are often marred by technical problems, poor sound quality and an evident lack of professionalism. Many acts appear under-rehearsed. </p>
<p>The question is, to what extent will this be a limiting factor in amapiano’s ascendancy to higher levels? </p>
<h2>What is amapiano?</h2>
<p>Emerging from the largely urban Gauteng province in South Africa as early as 2012, amapiano is today waxing stronger than ever as artists establish multiple digital platforms and spaces. Music executives are jostling to see how all of this might translate into mega bucks and business. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-nigeria-to-the-world-afrobeats-is-having-a-global-moment-179910">From Nigeria to the world: Afrobeats is having a global moment</a>
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<p>Amapiano is overwhelmingly deejay-driven, with infectious and often melodic beats interlaced with bluesy, jazzy interludes that are punctuated by the ubiquitous log drum (programmed electronic drumbeats that sound natural). </p>
<p>Growing from local experiments, amapiano is also ultimately derived from <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/house-music-guide">US house music</a>, which never transcended into the mainstream. Unlike <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/funk">funk</a>, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/punk">punk</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/grunge-music">grunge</a>, which have become staples of the US music market, house music had to find its way to South Africa and places like Ibiza in Spain to gain fresh wings.</p>
<p>In South Africa, at the dawn of democracy in the early 1990s, house music became the <a href="https://www.redbull.com/za-en/films/rave-and-resistance">euphoric soundtrack</a> for party-loving youngsters whose main wish was to dance the night away. It seemed they wanted to forget the horrors and bleakness of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> years. And so they plunged themselves into an experimental social and music environment that promptly birthed <a href="https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/kwaito/607373">kwaito</a> and other house music subgenres – the city of Tshwane spawned <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/amapiano-bacardi-house-south-africa/">Bacardi</a> house and Durban birthed <a href="https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/02/gqom-hashtags-feature">gqom</a>. </p>
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<p>South Africa has become a global leader in producing the most delectable waves of electronic dance music. Amapiano pioneers such as De Mthuda have called it a lifestyle or movement just like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/hip-hop">hip-hop</a>.</p>
<p>With the global ascendancy of West African <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-nigeria-to-the-world-afrobeats-is-having-a-global-moment-179910">Afrobeats</a>, perhaps it was only a matter of time for South Africa to provide its own music equivalent. </p>
<p>Amapiano provides a golden opportunity to feel good and create a seemingly endless array of dance moves such as the famous <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-omWLzeQoQ">“pouncing cat”</a>, characterised by the twisting of the wrists in a circular motion in unison with outwardly kicking legs.</p>
<p>The big names of the amapiano genre – such as <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/kabza-de-small-mn0003886957/biography">Kabza de Small</a>, <a href="https://answersafrica.com/who-is-dj-maphorisa-age-and-biography-of-the-south-african-record-producer.html">DJ Maphorisa</a>, <a href="https://briefly.co.za/facts-lifehacks/celebrities-biographies/121413-who-de-mthuda-age-real-names-interview-songs-label-profiles-worth/">De Mthuda</a>, <a href="https://briefly.co.za/48879-all-major-league-djz.html">Major League DJz</a>, <a href="https://briefly.co.za/93715-dbn-gogo-bio-age-real-parents-songs-albums-profile.html">DBN Gogo</a>, <a href="https://briefly.co.za/93119-mas-musiq-bio-age-real-education-songs-album-profiles.html">Mas Musiq</a>, <a href="https://briefly.co.za/101501-mr-jazziqs-age-girlfriend-real-jazzidisciples-songs-worth.html">Mr JazziQ</a>, <a href="https://answersafrica.com/focalistic-biography-and-the-songs-that-made-him-famous.html">Focalistic</a>, <a href="https://briefly.co.za/facts-lifehacks/celebrities-biographies/121403-who-musa-keys-age-girlfriend-real-culture-songs-profiles-net-worth/">Musa Keys</a>, <a href="https://briefly.co.za/facts-lifehacks/celebrities-biographies/132802-everything-mellow-sleazy-full-biography/">Mellow & Sleazy</a>, <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/review-josiah-de-disciple-spirits-of-makoela-vol-2-the-reintroduction/">Josiah De Disciple</a> and <a href="https://briefly.co.za/107185-lady-dus-bio-age-real-boyfriend-pob-career-profiles-net-worth.html">Lady Du</a>, among a continually evolving mass of producers, beatmakers, rappers and singers – still appear to be second rate performers on a global scale. This could limit its eventual crossover appeal. </p>
<h2>Performance issues</h2>
<p>One of South Africa’s most energetic performers has got to be rapper <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/cassper-nyovest-mn0003285383/biography">Cassper Nyovest</a>. His <a href="https://www.news24.com/truelove/exclusive/cassper-nyovest-makes-history-with-fill-up-fnb-stadium-20171204">fill-up-the-stadium</a> endeavours and huge fanbase have obviously brought out the performance beast in him. There you have your star live performer.</p>
<p>Things don’t look so good on the performance front for amapiano stars. Kabza de Small is mostly staid behind the decks. The same can be said for most of the genre’s beatmakers and producers. Even the highly influential Maphorisa is much better behind the decks than when attempting to woo a delirious throng on stage.</p>
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<p>Lady Du’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjs36oqGLPA">performance</a> at the crammed <a href="https://boilerroom.tv/session/boiler-room-x-ballantines-johannesburg">Boiler Room x Ballantine’s True Music Studios</a> in Johannesburg this year should be a cause for concern about the range and possibilities of today’s amapiano luminaries. Her act looks and feels raw and amateurish. She, like many current amapiano rappers and singers, has no album to her credit yet (though <a href="https://fakazanews.com/2022/10/21/lady-du-works-with-nigerian-stars-on-forthcoming-album/">media reports</a> indicate one is coming). During her performance, she ad-libbed to other musicians’ songs she’d featured on. Indeed, she attained her status on a string of features, not a coherent body of work. Big names in the scene such as <a href="https://briefly.co.za/facts-lifehacks/celebrities-biographies/132445-who-sir-trill-age-wife-height-education-songs-profiles-net-worth/">Sir Trill</a>, <a href="https://briefly.co.za/facts-lifehacks/celebrities-biographies/126067-who-daliwonga-age-bio-real-profession-songs-profiles-net-worth/">Daliwonga</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/malumnator_/?hl=en">Malumnator</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/indabakabani/?hl=en">Toss</a>, <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/171970/south-africa-meet-sino-msolo-sun-els-protege-who-chartered-his-own-path/">Sino Msolo</a> and others are in a similar situation.</p>
<p>Amapiano’s heavy reliance on producers and beatmakers is revealing. Few rappers and singers are able to manoeuvre the decks with convincing skill and they have to rely on beatmakers. This is a characteristic of much contemporary music. </p>
<h2>The good news</h2>
<p>However, there are a few performers who merit watching keenly. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_gJ6Ga9XIA">TxC</a> a Gqeberha-born deejay duo, recently released an EP, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWoYquQ3g9E">A Fierce Piano</a>, featuring amapiano heavyhitters. They look good and move well but it remains to be seen if they can truly work a crowd or stand as bona fide musicians.</p>
<p>Another promising performer is <a href="https://briefly.co.za/facts-lifehacks/112580-young-stunna-age-real-relationship-status-collabs-career-profiles/">Young Stunna</a>, an <a href="https://samusicawards.co.za/ak_sama_award/auto-draft-993/">award-winning</a> rapper and singer. He’s able to convert his amazing vocal prowess to live wire stage performances, setting benchmarks to which other performers might aspire.</p>
<p>Amapiano is a youth powered movement that provides often despondent young South Africans with considerable optimisim, bonhomie and creative opportunities. It injects a belief in self and a drive to want to take on the entire world through the seduction of hypnotic beats. Time will tell if they do.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. However, he writes this article in his personal capacity and his views do not represent the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation or the University of Cape Town.</span></em></p>The beats are fresh but the performances are second rate and lacking star quality.Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1859762022-10-09T07:46:53Z2022-10-09T07:46:53ZWhat is cultural appropriation and why is it so harmful?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476888/original/file-20220801-77595-l4tehb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Album artwork for Mount Ninji And Da Nice Time Kid. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zef Recordz/Die Antwoord</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Die Antwoord is a South African band that uses hip-hop music to create a style it calls “zef”. Since it first appeared in 2009, Die Antwoord has been criticised for <a href="https://www.britannica.com/story/what-is-cultural-appropriation">cultural appropriation</a> (using cultural elements of a minority group in an exploitative way). It’s accused of copying the lyrics and styles of Cape Town artists rapping in South Africa’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-first-ever-dictionary-of-south-africas-kaaps-language-has-launched-why-it-matters-165485">Kaaps language</a>, and of mimicking the visual styles of Cape Flats <a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-how-some-of-cape-towns-gangsters-got-out-and-stayed-out-170485">gang members</a>. Adam Haupt has researched and written extensively on hip-hop and identity. He discusses cultural appropriation and the role of power in interactions between dominant and marginalised subjects in a case like Die Antwoord’s.</em></p>
<h2>What is cultural appropriation?</h2>
<p>In an article on cultural appropriation, visual culture scholar Rina Arya <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354629226_Teaching_learning_guide_for_cultural_appropriation_What_it_is_and_why_it_matters">writes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Integral to the definition of cultural appropriation is an asymmetry of power between two cultures that involves the majority/dominant culture taking from the marginalised culture. </p>
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<p>So, it’s more productive to think about cultural appropriation in terms of relations of power. For example, in South Africa, Afrikaner nationalists appropriated the local Kaaps language to produce the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Afrikaans-language">Afrikaans</a> language, a version that stripped <a href="https://www.litnet.co.za/kaaps-is-the-future-of-afrikaans/">Kaaps</a> of its creolised Khoi San, Arabic and south-east Asian roots to favour its Dutch origins because it could do so.</p>
<p>Cultural appropriation is both enabled by power and is an expression of power.</p>
<h2>How is Die Antwoord a good example of this?</h2>
<p>Die Antwoord means “the answer” in Afrikaans, the language associated with the dominant white minority rulers of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>The band has two members, Ninja and Yolandi. They created a hip hop outfit using Kaaps as a basis for their lyrics and styling Ninja as a Cape Town gangster. So, a privileged white man, Waddy Jones, created Ninja after previously crafting other <a href="https://oddculture.com/the-personas-of-waddy-jones-aka-ninja-from-die-antwoord/">hip hop personas</a> such as Max Normal. Jones is neither “black”/“coloured” nor “white” working-class. He is not a gangster either. </p>
<p>Stereotypically, speakers of Kaaps have been presented as “mixed race” or “coloured” people. They were segregated from other categories of black South Africans in the service of apartheid ideology. Speakers of Kaaps have also been denigrated as speakers of “slang”, as if Kaaps were not a language in its <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-first-ever-dictionary-of-south-africas-kaaps-language-has-launched-why-it-matters-165485">own right</a>.</p>
<p>To become known, Die Antwoord employed social media alongside performances at music festivals. The cartoonish violence and phallic imagery in its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc3f4xU_FfQ">first video</a>, Enter the Ninja, was designed to go viral. Once it did, the band was soon able to perform extensively in Europe and the US, thanks to a record deal. </p>
<p>In my book <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/static">Static</a>: Race and Representation in Post-Apartheid Music and Media, I argue that Die Antwoord’s success is thanks in part to racialised class inequality in South Africa and the fact that systemic racism has yet to be dismantled nearly three decades after democracy. The band used class privilege, social capital and networks to ensure that it succeeded – often at the <a href="https://www.news24.com/News24/Die-Antwoord-used-us-20150430">expense</a> of marginalised communities. </p>
<h2>How did the cultural appropriation work?</h2>
<p>Die Antwoord “borrows” heavily from <a href="http://www.dwkaaps.co.za">Kaaps</a> (also known as Afrikaaps) and from Afrikaans hip-hop. It draws on words and cultural expressions associated with black/coloured and white working-class multilingual speech communities. So it piggybacked off work done by black artists who established the cool of “rapping in the vernac”.</p>
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<p>Die Antwoord could appropriate this music because it had the power to do so. But its appropriation went beyond performing verbal stereotypes. It was also embodied, for example, in Ninja adorning his body with particular Cape gang tattoos. To quote <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/static">Static</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The band alludes to the <a href="https://thenumbersgang.weebly.com/history-of-the-numbers-gang.html">numbers gangs</a>, the 26s and 28s, via tattoos and the graffiti that appears in the background of their set.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Die Antwoord then sold itself as authentically South African to a global audience that knew nothing of the culture being appropriated.</p>
<h2>Who actually pioneered Afrikaans hip hop?</h2>
<p>Afrikaans/Kaaps hip hop was initially pioneered by the groups <a href="https://www.discogs.com/artist/220003-Prophets-Of-Da-City">Prophets of da City</a> and <a href="https://www.discogs.com/artist/996596-Brasse-Vannie-Kaap">Brasse Vannie Kaap</a> in the 1990s. It is now also championed by a wide range of hip hop artists from the Western Cape province, such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAEUTsz3OL8">Rosey die Rapper</a>, <a href="http://www.youngstacpt.com">YoungstaCPT</a>, <a href="https://emileyx.co.za">Emile YX?</a> and <a href="https://jitsvinger.co.za">Jitsvinger</a> to name just a few.</p>
<p>Prophets and Brasse did a great deal to <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/neva-again">validate black multilingualism</a> in an environment that still favoured imperial language. Members of Prophets of da City went on to form bands like Skeem and Boom Shaka, shaping the country’s youthful <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-kwaito-music">kwaito</a> music revolution. Kwaito affirms black multilingual modes of speech. </p>
<h2>Where does blackface fit in?</h2>
<p>While we might argue Die Antwoord’s use of tattoos and oblique references to the numbers gangs is a form of blackface, band members have literally blackened their bodies in the music video for the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIXUgtNC4Kc">Fatty Boom Boom</a>, for example. Die Antwoord proudly displays blackface as part of its persona. </p>
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<p>The US cultural historian Eric Lott <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Love_and_Theft.html?id=FwEJAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">reveals</a> that blackface minstrelsy took shape in the US in the 1800s when “white men caricatured ‘blacks’ for sport and profit” by painting their own faces black and performing racist caricatures of “black” subjects for “white” audiences. These projections of blackness had little to do with the lived experiences of “black” subjects. </p>
<p>The US historian Alexander Saxton <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2711892">contends</a> that minstrel shows “merged into vaudeville and the beginnings of cinema”.</p>
<p>Blackface is <a href="https://variety.com/2021/film/news/blackface-book-hollywood-racist-performance-1234996254/">not a thing of the past</a>. We need only think of South African filmmaker <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0776856/">Leon Schuster</a>’s many <a href="https://mg.co.za/friday/2020-06-28-oh-shucks-an-accidental-blackface-hero/">blackface performances</a> in comedy movies that continue to appeal to South African audiences. Who can forget US singer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmndB6ONtxA">Miley Cyrus twerking</a> or the Dutch continuing to defend their blackface Christmas tradition <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2018/11/pride-prejudice-and-blackface">Zwarte Piet</a> as “traditional”?</p>
<p>Cultural appropriation and blackface persists in popular culture in a world facing a resurgence of right wing politics in the form of ethnonationalism, xenophobia and fascism. To this day, black communities fight for the right to represent themselves on their own terms with dignity.</p>
<p>Die Antwoord’s use of cultural appropriation to gain global fame is enabled by the continuing asymmetry of power relations that play out along race, gender and class lines.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185976/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Haupt receives funding from the NRF and UCT's URC. </span></em></p>Controversial South African band Die Antwoord illustrates the power relations that make cultural appropriation and blackface so damaging.Adam Haupt, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1863492022-07-07T15:08:55Z2022-07-07T15:08:55ZSpiritual traditions fuel South African jazz artist Tumi Mogorosi’s new album<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472953/original/file-20220707-22-hghrxn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail from the album cover of Group Theory: Black Music featuring a photograph by Andrew Tshabangu.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mushroom Half Hour and New Soil Music</span></span></figcaption></figure><blockquote>
<p>Blues … Black … Darker than grey/ Creation sounds Gold Reef Mine rockfall crush-sounds/ Guitar-string gun-spit tear flesh/ Black sonic science/ Darkest Acoustics … (from Where Are The Keys? on Group Theory: Black Music)</p>
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<p>South African poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lesego-rampolokeng">Lesego Rampolokeng</a> often writes about Black music in his poems. His collaborations with musicians on record are rarer but always remarkable. There was the casette-only 1994 African Axemen collaboration with Zimbabwean <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/louis-mhlanga-mn0000275221/biography">Louis Mhlanga</a> and a stellar crew of other pan-African guitarists. And his <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/0Mz62X4VpTZ1rSKzwxVGqf">Tears for Marikana</a> on Salim Washington’s album, Sankofa. And now the track Where Are the Keys? on South African drummer and composer Tumi Mogorosi’s fourth outing: <a href="https://tumimogorosi.bandcamp.com/album/group-theory-black-music">Group Theory: Black Music</a>.</p>
<p>What makes the collaboration so satisfying is the shared skill of both Rampolokeng and Mogorosi in signifying. Not the “signification” of semiotics, but the righteous, subversive signifying perfected by the Black churches and theorised by US literary critic <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Louis-Gates-Jr">Henry Louis Gates Jr</a>. For him <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Signifying-Monkey-Towards-a-Theory-of-Afro-American-Literary-Criticism">signifying</a> is “the practice of representing an idea indirectly, through a commentary that is often humourous, boastful, insulting, or provocative”. Communities repurpose ideas; poets like Rampolokeng do it via wordplay; jazz musicians, every time they improvise.</p>
<p>So when Black South African jazz players, <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Soweto_Blues.html?id=_fwkCIKoTpgC&redir_esc=y">decades ago</a>, heard and admired American jazz on record or at the movies, they not only copied the styles and approaches. They also employed many ways to “make it our own”. When <a href="https://journals.co.za/doi/10.10520/EJC-550c6cb82">Peter Rezant</a>’s Merry Blackbirds recorded the international standard Heatwave in 1939, for example, they played the tune straight – but the words, in an African language, became a praise song for the band’s national prowess.</p>
<h2>Tumi Mogorosi</h2>
<p>Musician, activist and scholar <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2013-11-06-talking-drums/">Mogorosi</a> started his musical career as a chorister in church. So, it’s not surprising that part of his signifying has often been through working with voices. From singing, he moved to guitar and later drums. At 18, he studied music at the Tshwane University of Technology. He now has a master’s degree in fine arts and is registered on a doctoral programme. </p>
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<span class="caption">Tumi Mogorosi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andile Buka courtesy Mushroom Half Hour/New Soil Music</span></span>
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<p>Along the way he produced his 2014 debut album, <a href="https://tumimogorosi.bandcamp.com/album/project-elo">Project ELO</a> (from a sextet with four accompanying voices). In 2017 he was part of the Swiss-based <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7MFRKYxvKM">Sanctum Sanctorium</a> with its allusion to sacred rites. He worked internationally with, among others, UK saxophonist <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KylWUp8tcug">Shabaka Hutchings</a>. </p>
<p>Those international collaborations set the scene for the joint release of the new album between South African label Mushroom Half Hour and UK imprint New Soil. In 2020, in a trio called Wretched with vocalist <a href="https://gabimotuba.com/gabisile-motuba-bio/">Gabisile Motuba</a> and guitarist <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2016-09-09-rising-star-turned-on-by-the-fury-of-sound/">Andrei van Wyk</a> he improvised and experimented with vocals and noise.</p>
<h2>The album</h2>
<p>Group Theory: Black Music has echoes of all those, but is a sonically distinct new project. The album’s <a href="https://tumimogorosi.bandcamp.com/album/group-theory-black-music">notes</a> refer to two musical sources, from South African and American jazz traditions. The rich South African vocal tradition of jazz composers like Todd Matshikiza and Victor Ntoni, and the work with voices of radical American jazzmen like Max Roach, Billy Harper and Andrew Hill.</p>
<p>Mogorosi <a href="https://tumimogorosi.bandcamp.com/album/group-theory-black-music">says</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>(Black voices in concert have) this idea of mass, of a group of people gathering, which has a political implication. And the operatic voice has both a presence and a capacity to scream, a capacity for affect. The instrumental group can sustain the intensity of that affect, and the chorus can go beyond improvisation, towards communal melodies that everyone can be a part of.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, alongside the jazz quintet (Mogorosi, reedman Mthunzi Mvubu, trumpeter Tumi Pheko, guitarist Reza Khota and bassist Dalisu Ndlazi) the tracks employ a nine-voice chorus, predominantly singing in unison to shape the communal voice. There are also two guest vocalists, Motuba and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/siyabonga-mthembu-187448229/?trk=public_profile_browsemap&originalSubdomain=za">Siyabonga Mthembu</a>, each providing a very different interpretation of the traditional Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.</p>
<p>That choice of song (the only one not composed by Mogorosi) makes explicit the community and spiritual traditions shared by Africa and the Black diaspora. Mthembu’s take on it is inspiring, heartfelt and soul-infused: the massed voices echoing the historic style of the <a href="https://www.discogs.com/artist/1760700-Howard-Roberts-Chorale">Howard Roberts Chorale</a>. Motuba’s voice is more subversive: underlined by Khota’s guitar improvisation, she fractures lyric and phrasing deliberately to build tension with the choir. </p>
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<p>The very distinctive instrumental voices, and the presence of veteran piano guest <a href="https://www.inyourpocket.com/johannesburg/andile-yenana-sextet-album-launch_10048e">Andile Yenana</a>, also interrogate conventional roles in an ensemble. Who is a leader and who a composer when each sonic element cedes and creates space for the ideas of others. Far less smooth is the sound of the chorus on Thaba Bosiu, the track featuring Yenana, where fragmented textures and that capacity to “scream” that Mogorosi notes come to the fore over urgent, imaginative improvisation from drums, guitar, piano and bass. The track is faded out (it’s a long album), but that’s the one I wanted more of.</p>
<h2>The theory</h2>
<p>The theoretical underpinnings of the album are many. The title Group Theory: Black Music foregrounds three: association, identity and closure. But there is nothing dry and theoretical about the sound. It’s warm, human and at points more tuneful than some of Mogorosi’s previous work. </p>
<p>The drummer <a href="https://tumimogorosi.bandcamp.com/album/group-theory-black-music">quotes</a> jazz historian and critic <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/amiri-baraka">Amiri Baraka’s</a> proposition about the “New Black Music” of another era – “Find the self, then kill it” – to point to the collective and global struggle to generate new identities, ideas and sounds from those who were previously hemmed in.</p>
<p>The closing track, Where Are the Keys? with the prominent presence of veterans Yenana and Rampolokeng, and the poet’s encyclopedic stringing together of all the music’s sonic, intellectual and revolutionary influences, ties everything together. </p>
<p>Reading the poetry (which is supplied) is a rich source of perspectives for all kinds of thinking beyond the edges of a record. The situation of war, poverty but also creativity into which the music is published means that, right now, closure isn’t an answer; it’s a question too:</p>
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<p>Slash that … vinyl scratch/ The pain slides through the gash/ Tripping off morning horns/ Past the dawning…</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Group Theory: Black Music is the name of the new album from the composer, drummer and scholar. On it jazz meets political theory.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1839502022-05-27T15:55:12Z2022-05-27T15:55:12ZSpirit of Ntu: South African piano maestro Nduduzo Makhathini on his 10th album<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465557/original/file-20220526-12-m7uh63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nduduzo Makhathini's new offering is called In the Spirit of Ntu.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Oupa Bopape/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://www.bluenote.com/artist/nduduzo-makhathini/">Nduduzo Makhathini</a> is a prolific South African pianist, improviser, healer, educator, scholar and storyteller. He possesses a gift that enables him to articulate a distinct and rich identity and genealogy. His sound signifies a deep rootedness in his ethnic identity in the Zulu culture, and an <a href="https://newint.org/immersive/2019/04/03/what-does-internationalism-actually-mean">internationalism</a> embodying it. <a href="https://store.bluenote.com/products/nduduzo-makhathini-in-the-spirit-of-ntu">In the Spirit of Ntu</a> is his tenth offering, and his second release under premier US jazz label Blue Note Records and the newly founded <a href="https://jazz.fm/blue-note-africa-launches-to-promote-african-jazz-artists/">Blue Note Africa</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The philosophy of Ntu (stemming from the philosophy of <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/the-meaning-of-ubuntu-43307">ubuntu</a>) speaks to the merging of the physical and spiritual and so, in conversation with Makhathini, I have sought to understand how he continues to bridge the artistic, the cultural and the spiritual through song and narrative. My point of departure for our conversation was something he had said in a previous interview:</em></p>
<blockquote>
<p>I want to try to get the piano to speak the language of my people, and by the language of my people I mean isiZulu … the melodic structures of the language … that filters into how my people sing … drawing parallels between the piano and some of the traditional music that we grew up listening to.</p>
</blockquote>
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<p><strong>Phuti Sepuru:</strong> How does In the Spirit of Ntu speak the language of your people?</p>
<p><strong>Nduduzo Makhathini:</strong> I’ve been struggling with this whole idea of what really counts as indigenous when everything has been diluted? Also, what counts as indigenous when so much has been taken away? Like the many years of erasure and the various moments of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-slavery-and-early-colonisation-south-africa">slave trade, settler coloniality</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>. Do we still really have something that is indigenous to a particular group of people? A sound that is not contaminated; a thought that is not contaminated? </p>
<p>So, that is how I arrived at Ntu. I borrow a particular sensibility from jazz music, but there are other histories that are pre the arrival of jazz that are useful for me to think about what counts as the sound of my people. Then I started thinking about separating between jazz and the jazziness. When I speak about jazz, it’s of course the transatlantic stories, but when I speak about the jazziness I’m speaking about syncopation, swing, improvisation. These are things that have always been there; they did not come with the arrival of jazz in South Africa in the 1930s.</p>
<p>I’m particularly attracted to (Rwandan poet and philosopher Alexis) <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexis-Kagame">Kagame</a>’s thinking about it. He speaks about the four categories: umuntu, which contains the spirit aspect – divinities, the ancestors; kintu; hantu is about time and space; and kuntu is about aesthetics and beauty. Given these categories, I realised that for these sounds to make sense, we need to start creating homes for them. For me, <a href="https://www.space.com/16042-cosmology.html">cosmology</a> is a pursuit – where are these sounds enunciating from? What are these homes? What do they look like? The sound of my people is also about conflict. It’s also about disparity – not being able to touch in concrete ways, the things that are important to us. It’s also about collective memory, the diasporas. In South Africa, particularly, the exile and inxile discourse and how jazz has always been emerging out of this moment of displacement.</p>
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<p><strong>Phuti Sepuru:</strong> In what way did the 2021 Durban <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57996373">unrest and riots</a> serve as the ‘canvas’ for this work?</p>
<p><strong>Nduduzo Makhathini:</strong> I was meant to record in the US, and of course, I couldn’t get that organised. Then I asked Jaleel (Shaw), Nasheet Waits, and all these guys who were meant to be on the record if they were keen on coming to South Africa. Jaleel was like, ‘Bro, given these riots and burning, I don’t think so.’ So, these are the underpinning themes and events that were taking place and I started thinking that we always think about ‘76 (the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto uprising</a>) to the ‘80s (<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/apartheid-early-1980s">apartheid violence</a>), about (South African pianist <a href="https://abdullahibrahim.co.za/biography/">Abdullah Ibrahim</a>’s track) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-irE1AEH8Qg">Mannenberg</a> and how it locates that moment, but we always think of it as a backdrop – a soundtrack.</p>
<p>This album is emerging out of these burning fires. We’re burning because the system has always been a minute away from collapsing. And now, with the (COVID-19) pandemic, even the suggestions of <a href="https://sacoronavirus.co.za/2020/04/08/social-distancing/">social distancing</a> – how do people exercise social distancing if you’ve pushed them to extreme dysfunctionality in the townships? You started to see that all the regulations are for a particular people that live in a particular category – a class – but it’s not speaking to the majority. I’m one of those people that is in the unrepresented majority. The system failed artists dismally. Then I said, “I am with the people that are tired. I am part of those people that are tired. I’m going to play these sounds from these burning fires.” That’s how this album came about.</p>
<p>This is what I am doing with this album – I’m going to burn inside until my ancestors show up because this needs to change. I think about fire in a symbolic way.</p>
<p><strong>Phuti Sepuru:</strong> When listening to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj-juqNdsfo">Amathongo</a> on the new album, I was struck by the dissonant melody, reminiscent of amahubo (Zulu indigenous music), coupled with a sporadic, conversational approach in the piano. This is rooted in a trance-like combination of the bass groove, falling on distinct moments, against a fixed drum pulse. There are also evocative vocal chants that speak to traditional healing rituals. Please share more on this composition.</p>
<p><strong>Nduduzo Makhathini:</strong> I come from that culture and my grandmother used to sing a lot of amahubo. That memory is with me always. In this album, I sing more than I’ve ever done in any album and that’s what people are loving as well.</p>
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<p>Many years ago, I discovered (the book) <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/indaba-my-children-african-tribal-history-legends-customs-and-religious-beliefs/9780862417581">Indaba, My Children</a> and ubaba (Credo) <a href="https://theconversation.com/obituary-south-africas-towering-healer-prophet-and-artist-credo-mutwa-134986">Mutwa</a> speaks about the word ‘ithongo’ (dreamscape). He says something interesting because within the word ‘ithongo’, there is the word ‘ubuthongo’, which means deep sleep. But for us, it’s being ‘one with the star gods’. I love that. And it speaks about ‘iphupho’ – a dream. He says ‘uk’phupha’ is to float. So, there’s a sense in which all these things, for me, make sense of a cosmology that always sees the ancestral paradigm as really a paradigm that we’re inside of – in and out. And of course, using ritual as a connector to exist between the two. That’s really what the song is doing. The resistance of the bass line, versus all these crazy dissonant sounds… it’s living in the two worlds. </p>
<p><strong>Phuti Sepuru:</strong> Track six is called Re-Amathambo and features Swiss singer-songwriter <a href="https://www.annawidauer.at">Anna Widauer</a>. This track connects to the original, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTr5a93n4fw">Amathambo</a> (bones), found on your 2017 album, <a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/15689053-Nduduzo-Makhathini-iKhambi">Ikhambi</a>. How did you approach the song?</p>
<p><strong>Nduduzo Makhathini:</strong> Re-Amathambo is ‘re’ – a reply, but also ‘re’ (we) in Sesotho. I’ve been interested in the Basotho cosmology.</p>
<p>When we were touring, I started telling Anna about this idea about my view to the piano as ritual technology or a space for divination. I was telling her about how I recorded that song Amathambo as a way of trying to divine the future and the things that will be happening. On the one hand there’s the idea of amathambo being in the physical realm while exploring something that’s intangible in another realm. That speaks about how as people in the universe we are constantly hearing and thinking about similar things, but from different contexts. </p>
<p>Anna seemed to have so much connection to this idea of revealing these things: what are these codes that help us enter a mode of revelation or a prophetic mode? It was a chant before: ‘Weh mathambo, oooh mathambo, hlanganani.’ The story was: there was a man that went to a healer and every time the healer threw the bones, they would go different ways, suggesting that his life was falling apart. The coming together of the bones that the healer was chanting would mean the coming together of his life. So, we brought in that story, and I wrote lyrics, and came out with what I think is a beautiful version of this song.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183950/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phuti Sepuru does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The jazz star says he wants his piano to speak in his isiZulu language, and that his music is born from spiritual concerns.Phuti Sepuru, Lecturer in Jazz, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1725322021-12-15T14:33:37Z2021-12-15T14:33:37ZCelebrating Dolly Rathebe, South Africa’s original black woman superstar<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435044/original/file-20211201-27-aij6vy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dolly Rathebe (centre) in detail of the album cover for Dolly Rathebe & Elite Swingsters.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gallo Music Publishing</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dolly-rathebe">Dolly Rathebe</a>, the musical legend of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/sophiatown">Sophiatown</a>, is part of South Africa’s rich heritage and history. Sophiatown was a much-storied suburb and vibrant cultural hub in Johannesburg that was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/11/story-cities-19-johannesburg-south-africa-apartheid-purge-sophiatown">destroyed</a> by the South African state in 1955. Its 60,000 black residents were forcibly removed to Meadowlands, a township outside the city, as the country’s white ruling party entrenched apartheid’s policy of racial segregation. </p>
<p>Together with <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/miriam-makeba">Miriam Makeba</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/letta-mbulu">Letta Mbulu</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/dorothy-masuku-africa-has-lost-a-singer-composer-and-a-hero-of-the-struggle-112425">Dorothy Masuku</a>, Rathebe’s name represents a golden era of local blues and jazz music that captured the lives of black people. </p>
<p>These mega divas of Sophiatown came out of a golden era of literary and musical genius, a time – the 1950s – often referred to as “the <em>Drum</em> decade” after the popular black urban culture <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/drum-magazine">magazine</a>. <em>Drum</em>’s dramatic first decade, 70 years ago, amplified the names of black South African writers, <a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668">journalists</a>, anti-apartheid freedom fighters, beauty queens, gangsters and musicians.</p>
<p>During these times, South African female musicians rose and became stars. Their names were as big as the names of politicians like <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/gangsterism-sophiatown">gangsters</a> like Boy Faraday. They were gorgeous, they were powerful on and off stage; their pictures graced the covers of magazines and newspapers. Their legendary songs announced South Africa’s race blues to the world – an important record of their disruption of apartheid and patriarchy.</p>
<p>In March 2021 the <a href="https://jias.joburg">Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study</a> held a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=263675351884650">symposium</a> celebrating 70 years of <em>Drum</em> magazine, where I presented a paper, The Mega Divas of Sophiatown. It remembers the impact that these female stars had on popular culture, politics and jazz music globally. I was struck by the role that Rathebe in particular played in inspiring Makeba, Mbulu, Masuku and many others to follow their dreams and become singing stars. I wanted to know more about her, to excavate and celebrate her legacy. </p>
<p>A few months later I was awarded the University of Pretoria <a href="https://www.futureafrica.science">Future Africa Institute</a> Fellowship and a Xarra Books publishing deal to <a href="https://www.up.ac.za/news/post_3000475-esteemed-african-writer-and-academic-appointed-inaugural-fellow-of-up-artist-in-residency-fellowship-programme-">research and write</a> Rathebe’s biography. It is a unique opportunity to share the life of a legend with future generations – and to map the musical links between the past and future.</p>
<h2>Dolly takes Joburg</h2>
<p>Dolly Rathebe <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13696810903488595">paved</a> a glittering path as Africa’s very first black female movie superstar after appearing in the 1949 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZsP88-63A0">film</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0211906/"><em>Jim Comes to Joburg</em></a>. </p>
<p>She was born in 1928, in Randfontein, west of Johannesburg. Her parents named her Josephine Malatsi. She changed her name to the more glamorous Dolly Rathebe, apparently after a young lady from a well-off family. Rathebe was spotted singing at a Sunday picnic by two British film makers – director Donald Swanson and producer Eric Rutherford. The two immediately recognised her star quality and gave her the role of Judy, a club singer, in the movie. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435046/original/file-20211201-15-1k4y99n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A glamorous man and woman smile as they share a microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435046/original/file-20211201-15-1k4y99n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435046/original/file-20211201-15-1k4y99n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435046/original/file-20211201-15-1k4y99n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435046/original/file-20211201-15-1k4y99n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=347&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435046/original/file-20211201-15-1k4y99n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435046/original/file-20211201-15-1k4y99n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435046/original/file-20211201-15-1k4y99n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Screenshot from Jim Comes to Joburg featuring Rathebe (left) and Daniel Adnewmah.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warrior Films/Apex</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The synopsis is simple: a young man leaves his rural home to find his fortune. He is attacked and harassed in Johannesburg. But he is offered a chance to make it as a singer with a night club’s star singing sensation – Dolly Rathebe. The audience loved Rathebe’s sultry vocals and magnetic screen presence. Overnight her name became slang for everything nice. If it’s “Dolly”, it’s great. If it’s “double Dolly”, it’s out of this world. </p>
<p>Her famous <em>Drum</em> <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/showcasing-photos-that-defined-and-defied-racist-sa-11131464">cover</a> – wearing a bikini made of two handkerchiefs tied together on the city’s famous mine dumps – propelled her to legend status. The picture, taken by <a href="https://theconversation.com/jurgen-schadeberg-chronicler-of-life-across-apartheids-divides-145390">Jurgen Schadeburg</a>, got them both arrested for flouting the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01828/05lv01829/06lv01837.htm">Immorality Act</a>, an apartheid law that forbade sexual relations between whites and other races. The police suspected that they were lovers. Rathebe’s arrest just made her legend grow. Everyone was talking about it, and everyone was talking about Dolly Rathebe and singing her songs.</p>
<h2>Musical life</h2>
<p>Rathebe travelled and sang all over southern Africa with top bands like the <a href="https://www.capetownswing.co.za/the-manhattan-brothers/">Manhattan Brothers</a> and the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/benni-gwigwi-mrwebi">Elite Swingsters</a>. She was a star attraction for many years in <a href="https://soulsafari.wordpress.com/2009/03/22/african-jazz-variety-alfred-herbert-1952/">Alf Herbert’s African Jazz and Variety Show</a> which opened in 1954.</p>
<p>Rathebe’s music was not overtly political. She sang mainly about everyday troubles. There was <em>Uyinto yokwenzani umbi kanganka</em> – where she is complaining about her lover. And then <em>Into Yam ndiyayithanda nomi isel’ utswala</em> – where she is complimenting her lover, even though he drinks too much! Her own compositions were mainly about ordinary day-to-day highs and lows, like <em>Andisahambi Netshomi zam</em> about a young lady promising her mother not to go out late at night with her friends anymore.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WjvRCr1mtV0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Performing in 1992.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her compositions ranged from the popular talk of parties, gangsters and matters of the heart to the more political <em>Mbombela</em>, a beautiful melodic, deeply emotional classic that laments the fate of workers who have to catch early morning trains to go and create wealth they will never own:</p>
<p><em>Wenyuk’ umbombela, wenyuk’ ekuseni! Wenyuk’ umbombela</em>… (There goes Mbombela the early morning train…) <em>Shuku shuku shuku shuku</em>… </p>
<p><em>Mbombela</em> became a Grammy-winning <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXV_dip-HNs">hit</a> after it was sung by Miriam Makeba and Harry Belafonte on their legendary album <em>An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba</em>.</p>
<h2>A political force</h2>
<p>Although Rathebe’s compositions were not overtly political, her celebration of black life, black beauty and black humanity through her films and music was subversive. Apartheid sought to erase black creativity and achievement; Rathebe refused to be silenced. Rathebe, Makeba, Mbulu and Masuku’s music were dazzling and authentic; insisting on recording the humanity, depth and elegance of black lives beyond the cardboard cut-out smiling natives favoured by the apartheid government propaganda machinery.</p>
<p>Rathebe’s bold occupation of public spaces and her proudly African, slick city diva image made her the darling of movie and music lovers all over Africa. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668">Journalism of Drum's heyday remains cause for celebration - 70 years later</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>The decade in which the mega divas forged their phenomenal careers is also the decade of the historic South African <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/1956-womens-march-pretoria-9-august">1956 Women’s March</a> where women freedom fighters <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/lilian-masediba-ngoyi">Lillian Ngoyi</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/helen-joseph">Helen Joseph</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/bertha-gxowa-mashaba">Bertha Mashaba</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/rahima-moosa">Rahima Moosa</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/sophia-theresa-williams-de-bruyn">Sophie de Bruyn</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/albertina-nontsikelelo-sisulu">Albertina Sisulu</a> organised 20,000 women to march to the government buildings in Pretoria to stop amendments to the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01646/05lv01758.htm">Urban Areas Act</a>. These would’ve meant black women had to carry pass books as well as men. Their movement would have been severely restricted, exposing them to more arrests and harassment. </p>
<p>Dolly Rathebe and the other mega divas navigated politics, life and their music, gaining superstardom locally and abroad despite their third class citizen status in a racist South Africa. In the late 1950s, when apartheid repression intensified and Sophiatown was demolished, Rathebe moved to Cape Town to raise a family and run a shebeen. Her performances and public life faded. Her fellow divas went into exile, ending a golden era of incredible artistic output.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172532/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nokuthula Mazibuko Msimang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Her celebration of black life, black beauty and black humanity through her films and music was subversive.Nokuthula Mazibuko Msimang, Artist in Residency, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1710382021-11-03T14:59:13Z2021-11-03T14:59:13ZSipho Hotstix Mabuse: a South African legend whose music spans generations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429919/original/file-20211103-21-1oojtch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sipho 'Hotstix' Mabuse has his photo taken by fellow musician Nhlanhla Mafu, in 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oupa Bopape/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Drummer, saxophonist, composer, activist – and anthropology student – <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/hotstix-evolutionary-musician">Sipho “Hotstix” Mabuse</a> has turned 70. If you wanted a guidebook to the distinctive character of the South African jazz scene, Mabuse’s 50-year career offers one. </p>
<p>South African jazz occupies a landscape that is rarely elitist, never haughtily insulated from popular and traditional sounds. Professional survival demands a multiplicity of roles and identities from its artists. And the music has always had something to say about the politics of its day, then and now. </p>
<p>Mabuse’s remarkable life shows us all that and more.</p>
<p>Sipho Cecil Peter Mabuse was born in <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/orlando-west-soweto-2/">Orlando West</a>, a township in the heart of Soweto, Johannesburg’s historically black urban settlement. His father ran a small corner shop selling household supplies including coal, though he was, the drummer <a href="http://www.702.co.za/articles/328596/i-m-very-conscious-about-how-i-spend-i-don-t-buy-fancy-cars-i-buy-bargains">recalled</a>, never really committed to the entrepreneurial life.</p>
<p>But, like many of his neighbours, he was committed to resisting the oppressions of apartheid. During the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/anti-pass-campaigns-1960">1960 anti-pass campaign</a>, the young Sipho <a href="https://www.newframe.com/music-makes-us-strong/">held his father’s hand</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>marching alongside <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/henry-gordon-squire-makgothi">Henry Makgothi</a>, other leaders, in Orlando West. I was just a little impressionable kid, but I’m carrying those memories with me… </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Part of Soweto’s hunger for change was an appreciation for music, and especially jazz and the more conscious American soul artists. “Nina Simone blew me away,” Mabuse recalled. </p>
<p>Playing drums in a youth band was fine as a hobby. But music as a career? That was initially unthinkable in the Mabuse household: the young Sipho must study for university.</p>
<h2>Beginnings</h2>
<p>Things changed when some boys from another school joined Orlando West High for their final exams. Guitarists <a href="https://www.newframe.com/new-life-for-seminal-sounds-of-the-beaters-harari/">Selby Ntuli and Alec Khaoli</a> were already creating original music and aspiring to emulate what were called the “<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/what-lives-two-south-african-music-giants-tell-us-about-culture-under-apartheid-gwen-ansell">township soul</a>” bands of the late 1960s, who borrowed their sartorial style from Stax and Motown, identified their own experiences of oppression with the mood of US <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/black-power">Black Power</a>, and crafted lyrics in all African languages spoken on the streets. </p>
<p>Township soul was highly political in its proud self-assertion of identity even when its songs ran the gamut from teenage love to community hopes and fears.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429923/original/file-20211103-27-1l92i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A musician performs into a microphone, his hands up and fingers splayed, a saxophone around his neck." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429923/original/file-20211103-27-1l92i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429923/original/file-20211103-27-1l92i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429923/original/file-20211103-27-1l92i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429923/original/file-20211103-27-1l92i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429923/original/file-20211103-27-1l92i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429923/original/file-20211103-27-1l92i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429923/original/file-20211103-27-1l92i7e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mabuse in 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Heathcote/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The school principal encouraged his students to perform to raise scholarship money, and the young Mabuse offered his services as a drummer. Another teenage musician, Monty Ndimande, joined. Their early forays into more professional arenas such as community halls were disastrous. But solid rehearsal and sponsorship from a successful local boxer meant the band (which called itself The Beaters in deliberate echo of four equally musical Liverpool youngsters <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/the-Beatles">The Beatles</a>) soon had a dedicated following.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Little did we realise there would be such a demand. Some of the other bands were older, but because we were a high-school band, students from all the high schools identified with us. The money just started rolling in…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That led to recordings and, eventually, a decision to quit school and become professional musicians.</p>
<h2>Identity shift</h2>
<p>The youngsters started touring neighbouring African states and opening for visiting overseas artists. As fast as the money rolled in, they spent it. Mabuse <a href="http://www.702.co.za/articles/328596/i-m-very-conscious-about-how-i-spend-i-don-t-buy-fancy-cars-i-buy-bargains">reflected</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We were well dressed … We bought some of the most expensive clothes … If I had known about money what I know now, things would’ve been different. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>A 1975 stay in neighbouring Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) as that country’s independence struggle intensified was seminal in reshaping the band’s identity and discourse. Mabuse <a href="https://matsulimusic.bandcamp.com/album/harari-2">recalled</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A groundswell of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/black-consciousness-movement-bcm">Black Consciousness</a> influence was pervasive. In Harari we rediscovered our African-ness, the infectious rhythms and music of the continent. We came back home inspired! We were overhauling ourselves into dashiki-clad musicians who were Black Power saluting and so on.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On their return to South Africa:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whether you played <a href="https://www.masterclass.com/articles/mbaqanga-music-guide#quiz-0">mbaqanga</a> or not, everybody became proud of who they were: {believing} the type of music that we do must relate to the politics of the day … the music must derive from our environment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Their subsequent album, <em><a href="https://matsulimusic.bandcamp.com/album/harari-2">Harari</a></em>, recorded for the country’s only independent black record label, As-Shams, soon gave its title to a <a href="https://www.newframe.com/new-life-for-seminal-sounds-of-the-beaters-harari/">re-named band</a>. The studio stable brought them into contact with older, more serious jazzmen. </p>
<p>Hornmen like trumpeter <a href="https://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-man-behind-the-trumpet-dennis-mpale-gallo-records-review-by-seton-hawkins">Dennis Mpale</a> played on Harari; South Africa’s top saxophonist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kippie-jeremiah-moeketsi">Kippie Moeketsi</a> used Mabuse and Khaoli on his own crossover recording: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFgJ0GZ0CrY"><em>Tshona</em></a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Kippie looked at us very suspiciously at first. After all, we were just <em>laaities</em> – kids – from a pop band. We were quite in awe too. But after we all played, he came over, smiling, to congratulate us … The only way we could prove ourselves was to play jazz – even if on most stages we played pop music.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Harari</em> became a runaway hit, followed by the next LP, <a href="https://matsulimusic.bandcamp.com/album/rufaro-2"><em>Rufaro</em></a> (Happiness). By 1976, <a href="https://mg.co.za/friday/2021-03-20-harari-a-union-of-music-defiant-politics-and-african-pride/">Harari</a> was voted South Africa’s top instrumental group. But in the political turmoil that followed the June 16 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising">Soweto uprising</a>, the band also helped the struggle, smuggling fleeing rebels to neighbouring states as they toured. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z8YV0W61hoE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Harari in 1985.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After the <a href="https://mg.co.za/friday/2021-03-20-harari-a-union-of-music-defiant-politics-and-african-pride/">sudden death</a> of Selby Ntuli in 1978, Mabuse became leader of an outfit whose membership now changed often.</p>
<p>By 1980 Harari had garnered more awards, topped more charts, and become the first black band to headline Johannesburg’s <a href="https://www.theheritageportal.co.za/article/colosseum-cinema-fantasy-thirties-modern-apartment-living-johannesburg">Colosseum theatre</a>. But tensions within the outfit were growing. By 1982, Harari had broken up.</p>
<h2>Going solo</h2>
<p>Mabuse became a solo artist, continuing to create impressive chart-toppers such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q71D_K78IE"><em>Burn Out</em></a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi1WdVZ_oj8"><em>Jive Soweto</em></a>. He increasingly used his showbiz travels and identity to hide the work of carrying communications and intelligence in and out of the country for the underground struggle of the banned <a href="https://www.anc1912.org.za/history/">African National Congress</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429926/original/file-20211103-15-1u83biq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Album cover with the words 'Burn Out' and an image of a man with a short Afro and shades in a leather jacket against a zinc metal background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429926/original/file-20211103-15-1u83biq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/429926/original/file-20211103-15-1u83biq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429926/original/file-20211103-15-1u83biq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429926/original/file-20211103-15-1u83biq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429926/original/file-20211103-15-1u83biq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429926/original/file-20211103-15-1u83biq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/429926/original/file-20211103-15-1u83biq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A hit in 1987.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gallo Record Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the dawn of change in South Africa, his 1989 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_z_Kj7G_iM"><em>Chant of the Marching</em></a> memorialised the heady, tragic events of June 1976.</p>
<p>By then Mabuse was using his earnings more sensibly, supporting older family and <a href="http://www.702.co.za/articles/328596/i-m-very-conscious-about-how-i-spend-i-don-t-buy-fancy-cars-i-buy-bargains">buying his mother a house</a>. </p>
<p>By the 1990s, as apartheid ended, he was active in organising artists and advising on cultural matters, though shunning formal political roles.</p>
<p>Then another ambition – on the back burner since The Beaters made it big – was revived. Mabuse went <a href="https://www.news24.com/channel/sipho-hotstix-mabuse-returns-to-school-20120217">back to high school</a>, passed his exams and <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/entertainment/2020-04-30-music-legend-sipho-hotstix-mabuse-to-go-back-to-school/">signed up</a> for an undergraduate degree in anthropology.</p>
<p>He still performs – in revival shows featuring his pop hits and in jazz contexts. In 2018, he was one of the founding artists of <a href="https://www.newframe.com/music-makes-us-strong/">The Liberation Project</a>, with percussionist Dan Chiorboli, singer Roger Lucey, guitarist and producer Phil Manzanera and a cross-national cast of dozens. </p>
<p>That revisioned resistance music from South African, Italian anti-fascist resistance, Cuban and other struggles, releasing a <a href="https://soundcloud.com/justmusicsouthafrica/sets/the-liberation-project-songs-that-made-us-free">double album</a> and touring the world.</p>
<h2>Elder statesman</h2>
<p>Now an elder statesman of South African music, regularly invited onto industry panels, Mabuse hasn’t given up the political convictions that motivated him back in the 1970s. Music, he knows, still matters off as well as on the stage.</p>
<p>Talking about The Liberation Project back in 2018, he <a href="https://www.newframe.com/new-life-for-seminal-sounds-of-the-beaters-harari/">reflected</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most of what we’ve done since 1994 has been done badly. There’s poverty, corruption and leaders do not listen. But if we remain fearful, we’ll stay subject to those in power. We have strength in numbers, and in our convictions, and music can remind us and reawaken that.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171038/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Jazz star Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse has turned 70. In 50 years, his music career has come to help define South African politics and popular culture.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1647022021-07-20T14:42:42Z2021-07-20T14:42:42ZThe spirit, life and art of Tsepo Tshola, pastor of South African pop<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411835/original/file-20210719-15-sru9ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tsepo Tshola during the memorial service of Hugh Masekela in 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Frennie Shivambu/Gallo Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I grieve to start this way. No sooner had I struggled to find some means to say my goodbyes to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-magnificent-mabi-thobejane-master-south-african-drummer-162231">Mabi Thobejane</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/steve-kekana-an-80s-south-african-pop-star-and-much-more-164141">Steve Kekana</a>, than South African music lost singer and composer <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-village-pope-has-passed-remembering-tsepo-tshola-lesothos-musical-giant-164650">Tsepo Tshola</a>. </p>
<p>These three masters of the nation’s musical soul were famous, but not celebrities. Because they never acted like that. Complex personalities and talents, they all possessed that son-of-the-soil joviality that made them ever accessible and “simple” in the reverent way South Africans use that adjective. </p>
<p>I remember, in 1978, during one of my many research tours in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Lesotho">Lesotho</a>, a mountainous kingdom encircled by South Africa, I was hanging with the brilliant guitarist and composer <a href="https://sisgwenjazz.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/frank-leepa-biography-brutal-history-personal-beefs-and-brilliant-music/">Frank Leepa</a>, drummers Moss Nkofo and the one and only Black Jesus (passing around the herb), and Tsepo, in a ramshackle old storefront across from Maseru Market.</p>
<p>They were Uhuru Band back then, and flushed with the success of their first hit song, simply entitled <em>Africa</em>. The song merely praises and celebrates the mother continent, yet so repressive was South Africa’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> regime that the band was banned from performing there. Their manager, Peter Schneider, pondered what to do. Shuffle the personnel a bit and change their name, I shrugged. And so eventually did they re-emerge as <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/ode-sankomota">Sankomota</a> – Lesotho’s most famous Afro-fusion pop ensemble. </p>
<p>Tsepo would go on to bridge Lesotho and South Africa in a time of political tumult. What drove his life and his music would be his fierce sense of belonging to both nations as one.</p>
<h2>The life</h2>
<p>He was born in 1953 in the Berea district of western Lesotho, in the “one-street” but scenic town of Teyateyaneng or TY. Tsepo, however, had other inspirations for his musical vocation than the late-night dances at TY’s famous Blue Mountain Inn. </p>
<p>His father Mokoteli was a pastor with the African Methodist Episcopal <a href="https://www.ame-church.com/our-church/our-history/">Church</a>, and both the Reverend Tshola and his wife MaLimpho were stalwarts of the double vocal quartet the Vertical 8. Tsepo always emphasised this church as his musical alma mater, with its liturgical roots in African-American hymnody (the singing or composition of hymns). </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="On a live music stage, a balding man in a tunic with cloth over his shoulder holds a walking stick. He is bathed in blue and silver stage light." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411925/original/file-20210719-19-15tncr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Tsepo Tshola performs at a jazz festival in South Africa, 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vathiswa Ruselo/Sowetan/Gallo Images</span></span>
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<p>By 1970 he had already joined Leepa, and they would form Uhuru in 1975. In the late 1970s, now as <a href="https://shifty.co.za/records/sankomota/">Sankomota</a>, they were the house band at Maseru’s Victoria Hotel, entertaining luminaries such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/miriam-makeba">Miriam Makeba</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a>, exiled from South Africa by their politics.</p>
<p>1983 was their breakout year, with South African producer Lloyd Ross of <a href="https://shifty.co.za/records/shifty-story/">Shifty Records</a> recording their first album, <a href="https://shifty.co.za/records/sankomota/"><em>Sankomota</em></a>, and the release of Leepa’s hit composition <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Hugh-Masekela-Pula-Ea-Na/release/2420893"><em>It’s Raining</em></a>. With Masekela, Tsepo toured southern Africa and ventured to London, where the rest of Sankomota joined him in 1985. </p>
<p>Returning from London as Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and the end of white minority rule approached, Tsepo then joined Masekela for his epochal homecoming <em>Sekunjalo</em> tour of South Africa in 1991. Masekela was stunned by the massive adulation with which he was greeted by audiences (including me) that he feared had forgotten him. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-village-pope-has-passed-remembering-tsepo-tshola-lesothos-musical-giant-164650">The Village Pope has passed: remembering Tsepo Tshola, Lesotho's musical giant</a>
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<p>Tsepo seized the opportunity to begin what would be his legendary solo career, one that would last until his heartrending departure on 15 July 2021. Collaborating and leading the vocals for countless top artists and ensembles, his gravelly “Louis Armstrong” baritone would drive gospel, traditional and pop songs in Sesotho and under the name The Village Pope.</p>
<h2>The spirit</h2>
<p>The intertwining of inner spirit, life and art in Tsepo Tshola’s odyssey cannot be overemphasised. Let me illustrate this through the songs. </p>
<p>Tsepo was astonishingly prolific, and he continued composing, recording and performing almost until his death. Of this monumental catalogue, however, a few are sure to be played as long as the turbulent, ebullient decades leading up to and following the turn of the 21st century are remembered. These include one of the earlier works, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s4jbA3TUgQ"><em>Papa</em></a>, from Sankomota’s album <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Sankomota-The-Writing-On-The-Wall/release/4311445"><em>Writing on the Wall</em></a> (1989). </p>
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<p>Religious in tone, as ultimately with all of Tsepo’s music, the song includes a solo verse as much intoned in prayer as sung in his raspy voice:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You’re waiting for your name to be called (What do you say?) Your body is shaking with disbelief (Tell us more)…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1994, a newly democratic South Africa witnessed the release of Tsepo’s signature album, <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Tsepo-Tshola-The-Village-Pope/release/10838218"><em>The Village Pope</em></a>, the one that forever gave him his name as iconic pastor of South African pop. </p>
<p>Most of the tributes that have poured forth in print and on social media have included this jaunty, iconoclastic alias. Yet it is not at all an attempt at self-congratulation or promotion, nor a reference to his sometimes harshly paternalistic admonition of his musicians in rehearsal and recording. It is rather an honorific proclaiming his unwavering commitment to kith and kin; his home in Lesotho, his close friends and family, his bi-national identity. </p>
<h2>Upliftment</h2>
<p>Avoiding the trappings of fame and shallow, transactional relationships, Tsepo was a devoted husband who never got over the passing of his wife in 1984. He never remarried, but remained, as many a Mosotho patriarch will sigh, “everyone’s father”. He was back in Teyateyaneng for a family funeral when he fell ill with COVID-19 and passed away.</p>
<p>Other songs of special significance include <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoN1rudM-2s"><em>Holokile</em></a> (All Right) from 1994, based in hymnody and virtually a hymn in itself. Indeed, Tsepo’s style has often been labelled “traditional gospel” but this is definitely the wrong music store bin. </p>
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<p>Tsepo’s style comes from a blending of the Afro-pop fusion of “black consciousness” groups such as <a href="http://www.music.org.za/artist.asp?id=170">Sakhile</a>, <a href="https://www.newframe.com/stimela-the-train-and-south-africas-musical-heritage/">Stimela</a>, and of course Frank Leepa’s Sankomota in the 1980s, and his own hymnodic upbringing. That is why his songs are more inspirational than celebratory, and more “step and sway” than danceable. They are ballads to uplift an African nation. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3ykfbkFuv4"><em>Stop the War</em></a>, from 1995, is not a religious tune at all, but an upbeat, pop injunction to South Africans not to fight one another over the spoils of the victory over apartheid. During the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-have-south-africans-been-on-a-looting-rampage-research-offers-insights-164571">looting and insurrection</a> that was taking place on the very day of his death, <em>Stop the War</em> was the song heard on radio stations nationwide. </p>
<p>Finally, there is his rollicking, township-jiviest song (no gospel here), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyEtgQoxxzc"><em>Akubutle</em></a> (Don’t Ask), from 2003, the one that never fails to bring listeners to their feet at a restaurant, club or party. </p>
<p>BT, as Bra Tsepo was popularly known, we can’t blame you for leaving us, but how are we going to get through all this without you? Akubutle.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Coplan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Schooled in music through church, he was driven by a fierce sense of belonging to Lesotho where he was born, and neighbouring South Africa.David Coplan, Professor Emeritus, Social Anthropology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1646502021-07-16T15:01:20Z2021-07-16T15:01:20ZThe Village Pope has passed: remembering Tsepo Tshola, Lesotho’s musical giant<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411672/original/file-20210716-21-12rsg9d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tsepo Tshola performs at A Night With Legends Live in Johannesburg in 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Screengrab/Slice Events</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“It’s the love of what I’m doing that’s kept me in the business,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj4DMqgl2Wo">declared</a> singer and composer Tsepo Tshola, who <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-07-15-village-pope-tsepo-tshola-dies-of-covid-19-complications/">passed away</a> in Lesotho on July 15, aged 68. </p>
<p>Tshola had been in showbiz for over half a century: a career that stretched from Sesotho roots and popular music in the 1970s, through international tours and collaborations, to his most recent identity as an inspiring gospel singer, and the co-founder of independent music label Killer Joe.</p>
<p>What characterised his work was a passionate desire to tell it as he saw it, whether that was about the evils of racism in the early days of his career, or the dangers of addiction and, more recently, the need for self-reliance.</p>
<p>His righteous preaching earned him the soubriquet of The Village Pope, but was also a family legacy. </p>
<h2>The young artist</h2>
<p>Tshola was born on 15 August 1953 in Teyateyaneng in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Lesotho">Lesotho</a>, a small, mountainous and landlocked country surrounded by its larger neighbour, South Africa. His father was a preacher and church organiser and his mother a chorister. He first honed his rich baritone in a church choir.</p>
<p>As a teenager, he joined the pop band Lesotho Blue Diamonds. Later, he hooked up with Anti-Antiques, formed by guitarist “Captain” <a href="https://sisgwenjazz.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/frank-leepa-biography-brutal-history-personal-beefs-and-brilliant-music/">Frank Leepa</a>. The two first got talking in the streets, he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bReTH8l3IKE">recalled</a>: “It was God’s doing. I was looking for a match – so one of us had a match and the other had a cigarette: ‘Sure, man, let’s share.’” </p>
<p>They also shared opinions about music, and although Anti-Antiques already had a vocalist – and was definitely not earning enough to support two – Leepa’s dream of forming a super-group, and Tshola’s striking voice, ensured his membership.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411663/original/file-20210716-27-1ssx7ya.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man on a striped couch in a beige suit, smiling." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411663/original/file-20210716-27-1ssx7ya.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/411663/original/file-20210716-27-1ssx7ya.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411663/original/file-20210716-27-1ssx7ya.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411663/original/file-20210716-27-1ssx7ya.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411663/original/file-20210716-27-1ssx7ya.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411663/original/file-20210716-27-1ssx7ya.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/411663/original/file-20210716-27-1ssx7ya.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Detail from the album cover for Nothing Can Beat the Truth (2010)</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CCP Records/EMI</span></span>
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<p>Tshola goes on:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I remember the first time I heard my voice on the radio. I was walking the streets and it was playing from a radio in a shop. I jumped for joy – and jumped straight into some water. I spent the time after that looking for cardboard to put into my shoes, because they had no soles.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In that insecure, erratic environment of the nascent Lesotho modern music scene, Anti-Antiques morphed into a second incarnation of Leepa’s band Uhuru. A small but relatively successful 1979 tour of South Africa crashed and burned when “we were banned for singing <em>Africa Shall Unite</em>”. South Africa’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> rulers did not tolerate the song’s Pan African liberation politics. Leepa’s fourth band, <a href="https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/ode-sankomota">Sankomota</a>, was founded in the mid-1970s.</p>
<h2>Sankomoto</h2>
<p>Tshola sang with that incarnation of Sankomota for some time in Lesotho, but by the mid-1980s he was working more widely too. He eventually accepted an invitation from jazz trumpeter <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a> to record the albums <em>Techno-Bush</em> and <em>Waiting for the Rain in Botswana</em>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Sankomota had recorded their widely acclaimed self-titled <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-11-23-00-sankomota-ode-explores-a-cultural-treasure/https://mg.co.za/article/2018-11-23-00-sankomota-ode-explores-a-cultural-treasure/">debut album</a> in Lesotho in 1983, with an international release the following year. The music combined <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sotho">Sesotho</a> musical roots with sharply contemporary musicianship and a stirring liberation message. </p>
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<p>When Tshola, by then in London, heard the cassette, he immediately rushed to persuade a London colleague, musician <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/julian-sebothane-bahula">Julian Bahula</a>, to help organise work for the band. After huge difficulties raising funds and arranging a route that didn’t pass through South Africa, where they were still banned, Sankomota made it to London. It became their base between 1985 and 1989.</p>
<p>Bahula organised a number of concerts and tours, many of them under the aegis of South Africa’s liberation movement, the African National Congress. “We were touring Europe and literally getting paid with bread and salami,” Tshola <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bReTH8l3IKE">recalled</a>. “There is no way you can keep quiet when you feel the pain. We were driven by pain.” And, despite the hardships: “That contribution still makes me happy today.”</p>
<p>Tshola’s voice sounds out sweet and clear on Sankomota’s second album <em>Dreams Do Come True</em> (1987) and their third, <em>The Writing’s On The Wall</em> (1989).</p>
<p>He also continued to tour with others including Masekela and, like the trumpeter, went through reckless times shadowed by drug addiction. And like Masekela, he took that experience forward <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2021/07/15/god-music-and-overcoming-drugs-how-tsepo-tshola-built-a-solid-50-year-career">positively</a>, later counselling other musicians battling addiction.</p>
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<h2>The Village Pope</h2>
<p>Tshola had been composing since the mid-1980s. As change came and South Africa transitioned to democracy, he found plentiful work there: appearing, for example, on the 1983 Africa Against Aids project and the ANC’s 1994 elections album <em>Sekunjalo</em>.</p>
<p>Tshola’s own album as leader, <em>The Village Pope</em>, was released in 1993; a second album, <em>Lesedi</em>, appeared in 2001 and a third, <em>New Dawn</em>, in 2003. He worked with the late Zimbabwean singer Oliver Mtukudzi, with South African vocalists Brenda Fassie and PJ Powers and, later, with dance music producer Cassper Nyovest, with vocal star Thandiswa Mazwai and, as his interest in returning to his gospel roots grew stronger, with gospel star Rebecca Malope.</p>
<p>By the 20-teens, much of his time was being occupied by his label Killer Joe, co-founded with musician Joe Nina and lawyer Stanley Letsela. That too was a response to earlier bitter experiences. “I never found managers,” he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj4DMqgl2Wo">said</a> in 2019, “they were just looters … Today, I manage myself.”</p>
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<p>Tshola also returned to his roots in other ways. He established a home in Johannesburg and another in Lesotho, where his adult sons, Kamogelo and Katlego, both singers, stayed. There, he collaborated with the Conservation Africa music project to archive Lesotho’s music legacy and mentor young musicians.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Remembering Hugh Masekela: the horn player with a shrewd ear for music of the day</a>
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<p>As news of Tshola’s death emerged, South Africa was staring bleakly at the results of nearly a week of unrest and disorder. Those mourning his death invoked his song <em>Stop the War</em>, as a message worth remembering.</p>
<p>But Tshola the social commentator had other words too. Asked by the South African Broadcasting Corporation on Freedom Day 2017 what freedom meant to him, he warned that living free was not a simple, self-evident thing: “Freedom needs discipline and focus. Unless you learn freedom, freedom will destroy you.” </p>
<p><em>Robala ka khotso</em> (rest in peace) to a truly golden voice and a very sharp thinker indeed.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Listen to a Tsepo Tshola playlist at the author’s blog over <a href="https://sisgwenjazz.wordpress.com/2021/07/16/rip-tshepo-tshola-1953-2021/">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164650/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For over 50 years Tshola was loved by audiences around the world for his rich baritone voice, which he used to inspire and to speak political truths.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1638752021-07-09T11:31:07Z2021-07-09T11:31:07ZMzilikazi Khumalo: a stellar Zulu, African, Pan African and cosmopolitan composer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410543/original/file-20210709-15-145gvkt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Professor James Steven Mzilikazi Khumalo (1932-2021).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Southern African Music Rights Organisation (Samro)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A composer of great stature, Professor James Stephen Mzilikazi Khumalo (1932-2021) <a href="https://www.samroscores.org.za/composer/james-stephen-mzilikazi-khumalo/">stands out</a> for his contribution to South African arts and culture. He was a distinguished teacher, a professor of isiZulu, a prolific composer with bold works that broke the compositional mould of his predecessors, contemporaries and possibly an entire generation after him.</p>
<p>With a compositional career that stretched upwards of four decades and an equally illustrious academic career, Khumalo received numerous <a href="http://bookslive.co.za/blog/2007/06/18/m-net-prize-winners-nguni-and-sotho-categories-plus-a-lifetime-achievement-award/">awards</a> and <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/news/latest-news/general-news/2021/2021-06/tribute-to-prof-mzilikazi-khumalo.html">honorary doctorates</a> in recognition of his stellar artistry in composition, language and the creative disciplines in general.</p>
<p>It is reasonable to enquire curiously about who he was and to explore the influences that made up his phenomenal success. </p>
<h2>Composer, linguist and more</h2>
<p>Khumalo was born in kwaNgwelu in the northeastern reaches of what is now the KwaZulu-Natal province on 20 June 1939. His parents, Andreas and Johanna Khumalo, were in the ministry of the <a href="https://www.salvationarmy.org.za">Salvation Army</a>. Later, the family moved to rural KwaHlabisa, where he attended school.</p>
<p>While one might not fully conjure up the music culture in his parents’ congregation, the Salvation Army is known for its marching brass bands and American congregational music. Perhaps his music orientation can be attributed to this background. Further, his life as a young person in the heart of rural kwaZulu in the 1930s and 1940s must have exposed him to a significant body of local musical styles. </p>
<p>Khumalo also grew up in different parts of the country, further exposing him to diverse languages and cultures. In an <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/18125980.2010.483861">interview</a> with the academic George Mugovhani, he reveals that the family moved to Vryheid and later to Venda in the northern part of South Africa. They then moved to Soweto, the largest township built under <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> for black people. He matriculated from Fred Clark High School, a Salvation Army boarding school in Nancefield. He pursued his teaching diploma at Bantu Normal College, Vlakfontein, a part of what is now called Mamelodi in the east of Pretoria. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mzilikazi-khumalo-iconic-composer-who-defied-apartheid-odds-to-leave-a-rich-legacy-163283">Mzilikazi Khumalo: iconic composer who defied apartheid odds to leave a rich legacy</a>
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<p>Composer and linguist aside, Khumalo also conducted the Salvation Army choirs the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Peart-Memorial-Corps-Songsters-971251566222931/">Peart Memorial Songsters</a> and the <a href="https://www.discogs.com/artist/6073428-The-Soweto-Songsters-Of-The-Salvation-Army?noanv=1">Soweto Songsters</a>. </p>
<p>He occupied <a href="https://www.samro.org.za/sites/default/files/magazine/pdf/samroNotes-50thSpecialEdition.pdf#page=13">prominent positions</a> in the music industry too. He was deputy board chair of the music rights body <a href="https://www.samro.org.za/">Samro</a>. There, he also chaired a committee that edited and produced <em>South Africa Sings Vol 1-3</em>, a choral repertoire. The team carefully selected compositions by black choral composers and set them in dual notation, tonic solfa and staff. Brief biographies of the composers are given as well as notes on aspects of notation and correct performance practice. </p>
<p>He was also a member of the <a href="https://www.samro.org.za/news/articles/national-anthem-owned-everyone">anthem committee</a> notably with musicians Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph, Richard Cock and other personalities active in the creative disciplines. Together, they merged <em>Nkosi Sikele’i Afrika</em> and <em>Die Stem</em> to establish the new <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-sa/national-symbols/national-anthem">national anthem</a> of the post-apartheid dispensation.</p>
<p>Khumalo is highly esteemed as a pioneer composer of the epic works <a href="https://www.artlink.co.za/news_article.htm?contentID=10792"><em>UShaka kaSenzangakhona</em></a>, the first Zulu opera <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/07/arts/opera-review-varied-cultures-entwine-around-a-zulu-princess.html"><em>Princess Magogo ka Dinuzulu</em></a> and the arrangement of the song cycle <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=du_m2snc_Bs">Haya Mntwan Omkhulu</a></em> (Sing, Princess) which is based on the songs of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/princess-magogo">Princess Magogo</a>. </p>
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<p>Collectively, these works placed Khumalo on a pedestal and brought him to global attention. This is the Khumalo of “firsts”: a Zulu secular cantata with soli, chorus and orchestra, a song cycle based on songs of a Zulu princess, an opera dramatising the life of the same princess. Importantly, all these are significant bearers of historical memory, heritage and Zulu vocal traditions.</p>
<h2>What’s less known</h2>
<p>Yet it is a slightly lesser known aspect of Khumalo that I want to focus on – the germinal seeds and the roots that bore this great talent. </p>
<p>Before the compositions, growing up in kwaHlabisa, Khumalo sang at weddings. Traditional weddings consist of fierce singing competitions between the groom’s and the bride’s entourages. These are festive occasions with a particular style of music quite unique to them. In fact, some of the <em>izitibili</em> (action songs) which are popular in choirs take their repertoires from this social milieu. </p>
<p>I propose that it is from this cultural knowledge learned through communal singing that Khumalo recognised the moving power of these songs. He would later arrange and add some of them to the repertoires performed during the <em>Sowetan</em> Nation Building <a href="https://africlassical.blogspot.com/2007/10/sowetan-nation-building-massed-choir.html">Massed Choir Festival</a>. The songs <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkZXU3fS-J8">Akhala Amaqhude Amabili</a></em> (two roosters cried) and <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGfIa23W6FQ">Sizongena laph’emzini</a></em> (we will enter the homestead) are two prime examples.</p>
<p>Khumalo also conducted choirs in his church. Across South Africa, black churches do not only sing hymns during services, but also <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=T9beDAAAQBAJ&pg=PT372&lpg=PT372&dq=amakhorasi+choruses&source=bl&ots=Fr22VQUtD1&sig=ACfU3U2PdaWsbgM9cPyF3pgtoRDgiknTCQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJ4fT44NXxAhVHe8AKHTJFB3UQ6AEwBnoECAwQAw#v=onepage&q=amakhorasi%20choruses&f=false"><em>amakhorasi</em></a> (choruses). These are improvisatory songs characterised by synchronised movements by the congregation, often with a lead singer. A variety of percussions accompany the song and dance. Most recently, blown instruments such as whistles have been added for varied effects. </p>
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<p>These lead to fervent moments during praise sessions in church service or other religious gatherings such as <em>manyano</em> (the women’s association of a church). They share qualities with <em>izitibili</em> (action songs) and sometimes repertoires overlap. Khumalo arranged these for his church choirs. </p>
<p>During his college days and early years of teaching, Khumalo formed relationships with musicians who would became influential in black choral music. One of these was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/18125980.2010.483861">Abiah Mahlase</a>, who went on to conduct the illustrious Daveyton Adult Choir which was part of the mass choir for the premier of <em>UShaka kaSenzangakhona</em>. </p>
<p>For this discussion though, my interest is in the jazz group they formed as an extramural activity, the Gay Gaieties. Other members were Cyprian Mahlaba and Abel Dlamini. Its post college iteration had Douglas Kutumela and Solly Pelo. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sibongile-khumalo-the-transformative-singer-who-built-an-archive-of-south-african-classics-154484">Sibongile Khumalo, the transformative singer who built an archive of South African classics</a>
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<p>All these were teachers who were prominent in choral music, especially in schools. They added traditional African music and South African black folk music to their repertoire, performing to highly responsive audiences.</p>
<p>Even here, Khumalo arranged some of the music. Later, they formed <a href="https://www.samro.org.za/sites/default/files/magazine/pdf/samroNotes-50thSpecialEdition.pdf#page=13">The Black Orpheus Folksingers</a>, a male double quartet of teachers who were school choir conductors. Concerts had a two-part format: the first with world folk songs and the second with local ones. Khumalo added his skills in arranging in addition to being a singer himself. This set a model for schools developing an interest in African folk songs.</p>
<h2>Astonishing versatility</h2>
<p>I have sketched a somewhat different aspect of Khumalo’s life. I have not dwelled on the “big works” and the formal composed songs because I wished to highlight his versatility as an arranger, conductor, singer and a grassroots “worker” in the early years of his music development. I suggest it was this multiplicity of genres, subgenres and activities that he was able to adapt so deftly as he moved towards the monumental works. </p>
<p>It is this diverse palate that fed his musical imagination as he established himself as a Zulu, African, Pan African, cosmopolitan composer. </p>
<p>On 22 June 2021, Professor James Stephen Mzilikazi died, at the age of 89. South Africa and the world at large remain richer because of his legacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163875/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thembela Vokwana has received funding from NIHSS, NAC, ANFASA, FULBRIGHT, OMT</span></em></p>South Africa’s greatest composer was uniquely shaped by his early years of singing at traditional Zulu weddings and working in jazz bands and church choirs.Thembela Vokwana, Lecturer, University of Fort HareLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1641412021-07-08T14:32:15Z2021-07-08T14:32:15ZSteve Kekana: an 80s South African pop star, and much more<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410286/original/file-20210708-15-8y7z4m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Steve Kekana in 2020 in Johannesburg, South Africa. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Oupa Bopape/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/entertainment/2021-07-05-disability-and-unjust-laws-failed-to-deter-kekana/">Steve Kekana</a> was one of South Africa’s most popular singers in the 1980s era of soul and disco. But he was many other things besides – he was a law teacher, talk radio host and a man who overcame apartheid and disability to thrive. Yonela Mnana is a singer, pianist and music teacher who is currently working on his PhD on South African piano. The Conversation Africa asked him for his impressions of the artist whose songs he teaches and whose paths crossed his several times.</em></p>
<h2>Who was Steve Kekana and what does he represent?</h2>
<p>Steve Kekana was a popular and award-winning singer and songwriter, who became blind at the age of five. He was born in the Zebediela district of Limpopo province in the north of South Africa, in 1958, not far from Polokwane, the capital of the province. He went to <a href="https://siloeschool.co.za/">Siloe School for the Blind</a> at Chuenespoort, Polokwane, the same school that I went to. Belgian missionaries were part of the teaching faculty.</p>
<p>He never finished school because he was expelled for championing student rights. So that’s one of the things he represents, human rights, in more ways than one. And we know his passion for labour law and that he ended up being a university lecturer.</p>
<p>And his singing. This came later – around 1979, when his first album came out. Also, he became much better known after he’d moved to Johannesburg.</p>
<p>His life intersected with mine because we attended the same school. I first met him when the school had its 50th anniversary. I was in the final years of my schooling and I had already started playing keyboards. I did music in extramural class. We used to do his songs in his absence. And one day he came through. He struck me as quite an independent person.</p>
<p>I think he didn’t like hero worship, it made him feel awkward and slightly antisocial. Later I would see that he didn’t really feel chuffed about people telling him how much they thought of his music. He was known as a very honest person.</p>
<h2>Tell us why he was so special musically</h2>
<p>In the popular music environment, his music represented everything. At first, as a singer and songwriter, he was just doing songs with commentary on social norms and issues. One of his songs speaks about this guy who always wears great outfits, tailor-made suits, but he doesn’t even have blankets to sleep on. </p>
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<p>He was as flexible as he could be in the music ethos of the time. As early as 1981, 1982 he began scooping up awards for huge hits like <em>Iphupho</em> (in isiZulu), <em>Mandla</em> (isiZulu) and <em>Abuti Thabiso</em> (Sesotho).</p>
<p>Most of the guys at the time were able to harmonise by themselves, but when it comes to his singing, we must appreciate fellow blind singer and musician <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/entertainment/2021-07-02-long-time-friend-mlangeni-pays-glowing-tribute-to-kekana/">Babsy Mlangeni</a>’s mentorship as well. In 1979 Babsy was already 11 years into the industry when he started working with Kekana.</p>
<p>I find that Kekana’s singing always mutated, as much as his songs did. </p>
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<p>He also moved quite a lot in terms of record labels. By 1983 he already had a label, Steve Records, which I assume was his own, that released his music. He reminds me of Frank Sinatra in this way. I think the idea of constantly reinventing himself was appealing to him. He was stealing and borrowing from all genres. The Americans do it nowadays, but Steve was doing it years ago. </p>
<p><em>Take Your Love</em> was ahead of its time, as were his collaborations with a white artist during apartheid, <a href="https://pjpowers.co.za/">PJ Powers</a>.</p>
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<h2>How popular was he?</h2>
<p>Steve’s popularity led to <a href="https://www.michigansthumb.com/news/article/Stampedes-at-Events-Over-the-Years-7361437.php">a stampede in Lesotho</a> in 1980. In fact his song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkh1HI3iLNY"><em>Kodua Ea Maseru</em></a> was about what happened. </p>
<p>Hip hop musicians trying to fill up a venue are always acting like they’re the first ones to do it in South Africa. He did it in Lesotho in an age when there was no Twitter and no marketing. Of course, then people actually went to see music more. Nowadays we see it more as a product than an experience.</p>
<p>Steve worked with a couple of bands – <a href="https://www.joburg.org.za/play_/Pages/Play%20in%20Joburg/Joburg%20Vibe/links/Why%20I%20love%20Joburg/links/Sipho-Hotstix-Mabuse.aspx">Hotstix Mabuse</a> was one of the producers. Steve, with his blind trio – Babsy Mlangeni, himself and Koloi Lebona – had garnered a lot of popularity in schools. And not only did they represent themselves, they also advocated for disability and especially blindness in a very real way. And they did it with such panache.</p>
<p>I was lucky enough to be invited to his house to help him with piano, you know, show him some scales. I think he made quite a comfortable living, really, and again I admired his independence.</p>
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<p>In 2010 I was invited to a workshop with other blind musicians and Steve, Babsy and Koloi were there and I think they kind of believed that if music worked for them as blind people, who were disenfranchised, it probably should be able to work for everybody else. But it’s sad to look at people from just one dimension. He was many things.</p>
<h2>How should we remember him?</h2>
<p>I think maybe that’s how we could remember him: he was just another ordinary human being who did extraordinary things. In the way that all other great people do in this world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yonela Mnana receives funding from Arts Research in Africa and First Rand Trust Bursary.</span></em></p>We should remember him as just another ordinary human being who did extraordinary things.Yonela Mnana, PhD candidate in Music, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1622312021-06-07T10:02:10Z2021-06-07T10:02:10ZThe magnificent Mabi Thobejane, master South African drummer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404661/original/file-20210606-23-18ew4un.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The late, legendary percussionist Mabi Thobejane pictured in 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">MELT 2000/Forest Jam Southern Africa</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Winter chokes the highveld in Johannesburg, South Africa, and takes from me, from our entire culture, a mighty mountain. <a href="http://www.melt2000.com/thobejane">Gabriel Mabi Segwagwa Thobejane</a>, the diminutive tower of rhythmic power, has left us: a man who did not so much play the drums, but became The Drum. </p>
<p>He <a href="https://sisgwenjazz.wordpress.com">reportedly</a> suffered a stroke at the age of 74 and <a href="http://www.dac.gov.za/content/minister-nathi-mthethwa-passing-internationally-acclaimed-sa-jazz-musician-mabi-gabriel">passed</a> on 3 June 2021. </p>
<p>Even though he was both master and a creator of South Africa’s indigenous sonic archive, Mabi, as we all came to call him, was also a showman and a collaborator. He could and would play in support of almost anyone, from jazz musicians to poets to mainstream artists. He was artistically intimidated by nothing and no one.</p>
<h2>The young Gabriel</h2>
<p>Mabi was raised in the township of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/mamelodi">Mamelodi</a> near the capital city Pretoria, where he absorbed the rural, neo-traditional, urban folk and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pedi">Sepedi</a> jive drum and dance-song forms that commingled in the streets and backyards.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.melt2000.com/thobejane">young Gabriel</a> had no calling to blow his horn in a church and defied his mother who insisted he become a priest. Her tendency to break up his makeshift drum kits led him to hang about the tanneries and artisanal workshops, collecting materials he fashioned into high-quality hand and mallet drums for which he later became so famous. From early on, Mabi pursued whatever “arrested” (<em>bopha</em>!) him full force without equivocation or compromise. And he was to serve a life sentence in the total reinvention of the highveld’s African percussion.</p>
<p>This single-minded pursuit of a fading musical patrimony from the ancestors ran in the family. Gabriel’s uncle <a href="https://theconversation.com/philip-tabane-the-african-musical-genius-who-played-for-the-spirit-96931">Philip Thabane</a> was already doing so on the electric guitar, forming the <a href="https://herri.org.za/2/percy-mabandu/">Malombo Jazzmen</a> with flautist <a href="http://www.theorbit.co.za/abbey-cindi/">Abbey Cindi</a> and afro-percussionist <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/julian-sebothane-bahula">Julian Bahula</a> in the 1960s. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Mabi Thobejane in 1995 in Johannesburg, assembled by Forest Jam Southern Africa.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Philip’s uncompromising indigenous originality led to a break-up. Before the end of the decade Abbey, Julian, guitarist <a href="https://sisgwenjazz.wordpress.com/2016/11/07/in-memoriam-lucky-madumetja-ranku-1941-2016/">Lucky Ranku</a> and mbaqanga vocalist <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/hilda-tloubatla-1942">Hilda Tloubatla</a> had reformed as the Malombo Jazz Makers. For Philip, only one young performer made the grade: Gabriel Thobejane. They went on to gain local success and world fame as the duo <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAs4bvnf8T8">Malombo</a>.</p>
<h2>The power of Malombo</h2>
<p>Given the extent of his contribution and influence, there is pitifully little written about my former bandmate Mabi. In my <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo5867457.html">book</a> <em>In Township Tonight! South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre</em> I wrote about Malombo:</p>
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<p>This duo revolutionised progressive indigenous music in South Africa from 1965 to 1977. Their first recording appeared in 1968, and in 1971, Philip and Gabriel travelled to the United States where they appeared at clubs and concerts around the country for two years, playing with Miles Davis, Max Roach, Pharoah Sanders, McCoy Tyner, and other first rank jazz musicians … In 1973 (they) returned home to perform for and learn from their own people in the Transvaal townships.</p>
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<p>Malombo’s 1976 album <a href="https://www.jazzmusicarchives.com/album/malombo/pele-pele-aka-malombo"><em>Pele Pele</em></a> and their 1977 appearance at the New York Newport Jazz Festival continued to build their international reputation. Their recordings, I wrote in the book, could not hope to capture the electricity and spellbinding virtuosity of their live performances. I had the privilege of performing with Malombo as a percussionist at many of their South African appearances at the time. I <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo5867457.html">wrote</a>:</p>
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<p>Philip and Gabriel kept up a constant, almost competitive musical dialogue on guitar, kalimba (hand piano), flute, pennywhistle and drums. The intensity of Philip’s guitar solos and melodic poetic recitation, and Gabriel’s percussive power and dynamics with drums, dance, and ankle rattles kept black and white concertgoers alike jumping and shouting on the edges of their seats. Truly innovative creative departures in black South African music tend to create their own trends and offshoots, and this was certainly true of Malombo. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Mabi Thobejane in Malombo, led by his uncle Philip Tabane.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mainstream bands such as Sipho Mabuse’s <a href="https://mg.co.za/friday/2021-03-20-harari-a-union-of-music-defiant-politics-and-african-pride/">Harari</a> and later <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/arts/music/obituary-ray-phiri-dead-graceland-guitarist-stimela.html">Ray Phiri</a>’s Stimela were influenced by Malombo. As were the “alternative” black consciousness ensembles that often included spoken and sung poetry that appeared in the late 1970s, such as Dashiki, led by the soon-to-be-exiled poet and artist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/lefifi-tladi">Lefifi Tladi</a>, Thabang Masemola’s <a href="http://electricjive.blogspot.com/2010/05/batsumi-brings-sunshine.html">Batsumi</a>, and the <a href="https://www.newframe.com/malopoets-mining-seam-peoples-music/">Malopoets</a>, precursors of rappers like <a href="https://www.africasacountry.com/2014/06/when-adam-haupt-discovered-prophets-of-da-city">Prophets of Da City</a>.</p>
<h2>A musical comrade</h2>
<p>In some ways Mabi Thobejane’s great initial achievement was his ability to partner with the introverted, crusty Philip Thabane for so long. Quite the opposite, Mabi was unsurpassed as a joyful jester and musical comrade. He loved and accepted his unpredictable fellow musos. I witnessed many a musical showdown between Thabane and Thobejane on stage. After a difficult return tour to the US in 1977, they went their separate ways. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404643/original/file-20210606-28272-dvvls9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404643/original/file-20210606-28272-dvvls9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/404643/original/file-20210606-28272-dvvls9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404643/original/file-20210606-28272-dvvls9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404643/original/file-20210606-28272-dvvls9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404643/original/file-20210606-28272-dvvls9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404643/original/file-20210606-28272-dvvls9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/404643/original/file-20210606-28272-dvvls9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=580&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The author (left) performing with Malombo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy David Coplan</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the 1990s Mabi had started to find an outlet for the sounds that had stayed with him from the Bronx. He continued being involved in some of the most exciting collaborations – with bassist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/sipho-gumede">Sipho Gumede</a> and saxophonist <a href="http://www.theorbit.co.za/khaya-mahlangu/">Khaya Mahlangu</a>, guitar master <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-12-14-00-madala-and-mabi-its-a-thing-that-spans-half-a-century/">Madala Kunene</a>, percussionists <a href="http://www.music.org.za/artist.asp?id=56">Amampondo</a>. For a decade he toured and <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/1997-08-08-thobejane-in-a-trance/">haunted</a> the electronic, eclectic studio sessions with UK act <a href="https://twitter.com/JunoReactor?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Juno Reactor</a>, who released the legendary acoustic/electronic percussive remixes of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crg_pMUBgIs"><em>Conga Fury</em></a>.</p>
<h2>Artist and showman</h2>
<p>Mabi was as much a showman and a performance event as he was a musician. He not only built his own drums, but created his own costumes of beads, antelope and cattle hides and distinctive body paint. Characteristically he would perform stripped to the waist, his face painted half chalk white and half charcoal black, his compact brown torso covered in white spots like a reverse-image leopard. His intention was to conquer his musical world as a drum guerrilla representing himself and his deeper Tshwane origins, without hybridity, without borrowing. And in that guise, what a lender and a collaborator he turned out to be. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-F9uJfVS6zM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A 2004 recording by the record company MELT 2000.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a proper <em>morena oa lefatse</em> (king of the earth), Gabriel Mabi Thobejane revealed the inner character of the people of the land in both musical expression and force of personality. He entered so many of our lives in unique modalities that enriched our worlds forever. I cannot do better, before returning to shocked silence at his passing, than to share a new poem by the musical commentator and scholar <a href="https://sala.org.za/sam-mathe/">Sam Mathe</a>. In <em>For Gabriel Mabi Segwagwa Thobejane</em> Mathe refers to Mabi as <em>segwagwa</em>, the frog, the creature he physically resembled that became Philip Thabane’s musical praise name for him:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Segwagwa</p>
<p>The bullfrog that croaks in the streams </p>
<p>and lagoons inhabited by ancestral spirits </p>
<p>the elusive amphibian that greets springs </p>
<p>with the gravel voice and tone of a groaner </p>
<p>Segwagwa </p>
<p>The showman with deft magical hands </p>
<p>whose rumbles are like a distant thunder </p>
<p>The shaman who plays healing sounds </p>
<p>on baobab drums crafted by the gods </p>
<p>Segwagwa </p>
<p>In the south the cold season is upon us </p>
<p>the rains are gone, rivers have dried up </p>
<p>it is time for you to go into hibernation </p>
<p>farewell grandmaster of the percussion </p>
<p>Till we meet again when the rainclouds gather</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162231/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Coplan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>He did not so much play the drums, as become the drum. His influence was felt through his trailblazing percussive work and his many collaborations.David Coplan, Professor Emeritus, Social Anthropology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1605702021-05-08T11:09:45Z2021-05-08T11:09:45ZRemembering Zim Ngqawana 10 years on, a singular force in South African music<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/399459/original/file-20210507-23-14h0f77.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Zim Ngqawana (1959-2011) on saxophone leading his Zimology Quartet in New York, 2008.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Zimasile ‘Zim’ Ngqawana, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2011-05-10-jazz-genius-zim-ngqawana-dies-at-52/">died</a> unexpectedly and too soon – on 10 May 2011 at the age of 51 – leaving bereft a family and a musical community that spanned the globe. </p>
<p>A flautist and saxophonist, composer and teacher, Ngqawana was born in New Brighton township in then Port Elizabeth, South Africa. After a university music education he became known on the jazz and dance theatre scenes. It was Ngqawana who was chosen to present music – a 100-piece ensemble – at the inauguration of president Nelson Mandela in 1994. He released his debut studio album, <em><a href="https://www.discogs.com/San-San-Song/release/1510503">San Song</a></em>, in 1996. He would tour the world with his band Ingoma and work with the likes of <a href="https://wyntonmarsalis.org/about/bio">Wynton Marsalis</a>, <a href="https://abdullahibrahim.co.za/biography/">Abdullah Ibrahim</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-hugh-masekela-the-horn-player-with-a-shrewd-ear-for-music-of-the-day-86414">Hugh Masekela</a>, in turn mentoring a new generation of South African musicians. He later established a school, the Zimology Institute.</p>
<p>Ngqawana’s <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/zimasile-ngqawana">biography</a> and his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/jul/06/zim-ngqawana-obituary">achievements</a> are well known. </p>
<p>Recalling him on the 10th anniversary of his death is to remember how a South African jazz musician’s life and death, in a country that generally treats the arts – and especially jazz – as an inconvenience outside of Heritage Day, could resonate so widely.</p>
<p>Ngqawana’s sound – indebted to <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/xhosa">Xhosa</a> traditional musical, western art music and jazz – fills the silence that destruction leaves. Committed to <a href="http://www.mahala.co.za/culture/i-sing-with-a-sword-in-my-hand/">creativity as healing</a>, Ngqawana’s legacy continues long after his death. </p>
<h2>A long line of saxophonists</h2>
<p>In the mid-1800s, Belgium’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Antoine-Joseph-Sax">Adolphe Saxe</a> invented a strange instrument made of brass but which, because of how it produces sound, is classified as a woodwind instrument: the saxophone. </p>
<p>The hybrid instrument was adopted by jazz, a genre that has always embraced hybridity. For jazz scholar Chris Merz, the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44651147?seq=1">saxophone in South African jazz</a> became prominent from the 1930s, part of the American Swing craze. </p>
<p>The 1950s saw the global decline of big bands and rise of smaller jazz combos. So began the reign of the alto saxophone in South African jazz, despite some growling intrusions from tenor saxophonists like <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/winston-monwabisi-ngozi">Winston Mankunku</a>. This is why South African jazz can speak of <a href="https://digitalcollections.lib.uct.ac.za/collection/islandora-7441">Ntemi Piliso</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/kippie-jeremiah-moeketsi">Kippie Moeketsi</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/benni-gwigwi-mrwebi">Gwigwi Mrwebi</a>, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2014-08-22-00-barney-rachabane-the-little-giant-of-jazz/">Barney Rachabane</a>, <a href="https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-2000629700">Duke Makasi</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-edward-jansen">Robbie Jansen</a> and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/mtutuzeli-dudu-pukwana">Dudu Pukwana</a> to name but a few.</p>
<p>It is also why it can speak of Zim Ngqawana.</p>
<h2>A self-made brand</h2>
<p>We may consider Ngqawana as a ‘self-made’ brand. Through his creations like Zimphonic Suites, Vadzimu, Zimology, Aphorizims, Zimphony Orchestra and the Zimology Institute, he crafted his own public persona in such a way that the culture industry had to follow rather than shape it for him. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gMd_DyhyfyA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Ngqawana’s making of the self was playful, but not superficial. He also resisted the label “jazz”, which he <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44651147?seq=1">considered</a> at once “too limiting and too all-encompassing”. Confronting the controversial view that there is no word for “music” in African languages, he correctly grasped that this is because, historically, music in Africa was part of life’s sacred and profane rituals. It was <em>ingoma</em> (the drums). In his sleeve notes for the 1999 album <a href="https://www.discogs.com/Zim-Ngqawana-Ingoma/release/12314662"><em>Ingoma</em></a> he wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ingoma is a tour de force of committed conscious kultur warriors, blowing a national clarion to draw the concerned listener’s attention to the fire that is engulfing our house as a nation in a state of emergency.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Antiquity and modernity</h2>
<p>The call for commitment of the artist as cultural worker and warrior, and for the recognition that people’s lives could and must improve, suggests why Ngqawana is important for those who insist on the transformation of our society and refuse to relegate African cultural knowledge systems to the dustbin of the past. </p>
<p>He wrote in 2001’s <em><a href="https://www.discogs.com/Zim-Ngqawana-Zimphonic-Suites/release/7732801">Zimphonic Suites</a></em>, that it’s all about “harmony between antiquity and modernity”.</p>
<p>For Ngqawana, this clarion should be heard and acknowledged by all. This explains his visibility on South African TV in the 1990s (especially with the hit <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMd_DyhyfyA">Qula Kwedini</a></em>) and his ubiquity on the airwaves and the live scene and, most importantly, as a teacher. </p>
<h2>Meeting Zim</h2>
<p>I (Lindelwa Dalamba) first met Ngqawana when was invited to Rhodes University, where he had studied. As a student I was privy to a jazz workshop he held. It was an odd, discomforting jam session. </p>
<p>Ngqawana made us play endless rounds of the standard <em>Stella by Starlight</em>, pushing us to the limits of our tolerance of its melody, chord changes and prior interpretations. That’s the point: to push through the given script until you find yourself on the other side. That used to be the point of jazz.</p>
<p>But my most important encounter was when I ran into him at the University of KwaZulu-Natal as a postgraduate student. Avuncular as ever, he declared his pleasure that those he had known as youngsters were continuing to blow the clarion. </p>
<p>When I said I was no longer blowing the saxophone, now determined to be a jazz musicologist, he promptly went to his office and returned with a copy of every single one of his albums, along with a copy of Amiri Baraka’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/ablogsupreme/2013/07/26/205541225/black-history-meets-black-music-blues-people-at-50"><em>Blues People: Negro Music in White America</em></a>. This generosity was an assertion of community, possibly the only impulse that has assured jazz’s endurance in this country. The gift is my <em>memento mori</em>: Ngqawana’s mortality, beyond death and vandalism, continues to inspire and to teach.</p>
<h2>The moment of annihilation</h2>
<p>Indeed, in 2010 Ngqawana’s studio was <a href="https://herri.org.za/4/stephanie-vos/">vandalised</a> by scrap metal thieves. To gouge the metal from the grand piano’s legs, it was turned on its side. Windows, the toilet and light fittings were broken. A saxophone was smashed.</p>
<p>At the moment of annihilation, perhaps, our true voice is heard – we scream, sing, respond. In improvising its hesitant future, the artist’s voice is born; informed by all it has ever been and seen. The sound bears witness, exhaled into the impassive air. </p>
<p>“This vandalism,” says Ngqawana in <em>The Exhibition of Vandalizim</em>, a <a href="https://vimeo.com/108982799">documentary</a> created by African Noise Foundation, “shows the extent of what has happened to them … A vandalism of the soul, vandalism of the heart, vandalism of the mind.”</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/108982799" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">African Noise Foundation’s documentary.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Committed to creativity as healing, Ngqawana left an extensive archive of published and unpublished music. It is important, therefore, that 10 May 2021 also marks the resurrection of the Zimology Institute, the project he initiated as a holding space for his philosophy and music. </p>
<h2>Principles of poetics</h2>
<p>His legacy is also one of poetics, the principles – conscious or intuitive and understood in retrospect – by which the artist articulates their style. In the film, a stubbornly resilient Ngqawana sits in the rubble left by the vandals and plays a percussive solo on the broken cistern. “We are condemned … to move into the unknown,” he says. Moving beyond the palpable pain in seeing his instruments and studio destroyed, he insists that the vandals are victims of the barbarism of colonisation. He makes art of the carnage. In filmmaker and writer Aryan Kaganof’s film <a href="https://vimeo.com/108933925"><em>Legacy</em></a> he stresses Ngqawana’s interest in the conscience.</p>
<p>Conscience and consciousness formed themselves through artistic discourse in the 1970s and 1980s, where culture was an inextricable aspect of, and outlet for, the political in music. Ngqawana always went beyond the political postures and personalities of the day, cutting through to the meaning of human events and their impact on the experience of freedom.</p>
<p>For us, Ngqawana’s enduring lesson is how art is able to contain, in its creation, its negation: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The true purpose of great music should lead us to silence … from sound to silence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Qula Kwedini</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160570/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lindelwa Dalamba receives funding from the National Research Foundation (Thuthuka).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phillippa Yaa de Villiers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite devastating setbacks like his studio being vandalised, the saxophonist and teacher believed that music can heal - part of a vision that shaped a future generation of jazz artists.Lindelwa Dalamba, Music lecturer, University of the WitwatersrandPhillippa Yaa de Villiers, Poet and lecturer in Creative Writing, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1546482021-02-08T14:17:25Z2021-02-08T14:17:25ZThe deep humanity of Sibongile Khumalo, South Africa’s iconic vocalist – and mentor<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382725/original/file-20210205-21-63mf3z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sibongile Khumalo performing in London in 2009.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brigitte Engl/Redferns</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When icons pass on, the default is to memorialise them based on the merits of what they did, as opposed to the gift of who they were as human beings. </p>
<p>In an unconscious assumption that their work defined who they were, their greatness is measured more by the prestige of their accomplishments and public status and less on how their very existence touched the lives of those around them. </p>
<p>While this may be appropriate and to an extent necessary, I believe that the death of a person augments the scope of memory. Its sting of finality provides an opportunity for deeper reflection where the central focus should become an individual’s character: who they really were in relation to their immediate community. </p>
<p>In this article, I attempt to illustrate the impact Mam’ <a href="https://theconversation.com/sibongile-khumalo-the-transformative-singer-who-built-an-archive-of-south-african-classics-154484">Sibongile Khumalo</a> had not only on me, but the South African art community at large. She was our matriarch and I affectionately called her “Mother”. My close relationship with her places me in a unique position to reflect on who she was, off the stage. </p>
<h2>All about the collective</h2>
<p>We both were singers but we seldom spoke about music and we certainly never shared tips on vocal technique or repertoire and such. Everything I needed to learn from her craft was embedded in her records, which I studied diligently throughout my early scholarly and professional years. </p>
<p>Ours was a relationship anchored in what I’ve come to identify as “personhood”. Nigerian poet and scholar of African philosophy, <a href="https://science.jrank.org/pages/8771/Communitarianism-in-African-Thought-Menkiti-on-Communitarianism.html">Ifeanyi Menkiti</a>, <a href="http://www2.southeastern.edu/Academics/Faculty/mrossano/gradseminar/evo%20of%20ritual/african%20traditional%20thought.pdf">encapsulates</a> this sentiment beautifully: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>As far as African societies are concerned, personhood is something at which individuals could fail, at which they could be competent or ineffective, better or worse.</p>
<p>Hence, the African emphasised the rituals of incorporation and the overarching necessity of learning the social rules by which the community lives, so that what was initially biologically given can come to attain social self-hood, i.e., become a person with all the inbuilt excellencies implied by the term. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the prism through which I choose to memorialise Sibongile Khumalo. Her legacy defied the universally adopted Western interpretation of personhood characterised by individuality. She was all about the collective.</p>
<h2>A gift beyond music</h2>
<p>Sibongile was the embodiment of African personhood. She always possessed an awareness of those around her. She had a ritualistic approach to everything she did, steeped in traditional practices and ancestry. Hers was a gift beyond music. </p>
<p>One of the traits that stood out the most for me was how she could create an environment where we as young artists could gather in her presence and, in that moment, feel like siblings. Whether at jazz festivals or industry events, we’d congregate around her in the common pursuit of absorbing her wisdom. Who could possibly forget her boisterous laughter that echoed through every room she occupied? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382948/original/file-20210208-15-6ux5gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women smiling into a camera, one in glasses and the other, eyes closed in a mustard blouse with leopard print scarf, looking happy and bonded." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382948/original/file-20210208-15-6ux5gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382948/original/file-20210208-15-6ux5gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382948/original/file-20210208-15-6ux5gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382948/original/file-20210208-15-6ux5gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382948/original/file-20210208-15-6ux5gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382948/original/file-20210208-15-6ux5gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382948/original/file-20210208-15-6ux5gl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The author, left, takes a selfie with Sibongile Khumalo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nomfundo Xaluva</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She was the glue that bound us together as artists navigating the volatile terrain of the music industry. </p>
<p>A staunch disciplinarian, Mam’ Sibongile would correct you without diminishing you. Her reprimand was an act of love. I always walked away from her feeling heard and seen. I remember a rehearsal in 2014 with her, <a href="http://www.gloriabosman.co.za/gloriabosman_about.html">Gloria Bosman</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Mimi-Mtshali-274880455273/?ref=page_internal">Mimi Mtshali</a> for a concert to celebrate the legacy of her parents, <a href="http://www.unizulu.ac.za/unizulu-celebrating-the-legendary-musical-icon-professor-khabi-mngoma/">Khabi</a> and Grace Mngoma. Let’s just say my intonation left much to be desired. She rendered me a look that tacitly implied, “You have work to do.” And rightfully so. I buried myself in practising so that I could arrive vocally fitter at the next rehearsal. </p>
<p>She had a way of allaying insecurities which often plague vocalists to the point of performance paralysis, especially in front of an audience of peers. She understood these dynamics and treated them with such sensitivity that one had no choice but to surrender to her teachings. As the saying goes, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”</p>
<h2>Conviction and transformation</h2>
<p>Sibongile was passionate and serious about the development of young black women beyond the parameters of the stage. </p>
<p>She recognised the contemporary value that young voices can contribute to spaces of influence in the broader arts community. As such, I had the privilege of serving with her on the Southern African Music Rights Organisation <a href="https://www.samrofoundation.org.za">Foundation</a> board. I was the youngest member, inducted at 32. Two years into my four-year term, Sibongile nominated me for vice chair of the board. In that moment, I knew from the look on her face that declining the nomination was not an option. I held the <a href="https://www.samrofoundation.org.za/blog/2020-04-28-winds-of-change-at-the-samro-foundation">position</a> for the remaining two years. </p>
<p>Sibongile would speak at length about the slow progress of transformation in academia and in the music industry. Never one to shy away from difficult conversations, she spoke her mind, inhabiting an undisturbed conviction on matters close to her heart – and people listened. Naturally, there were issues in the industry that brought her great discomfort, but never once did she relinquish her dignity and bright smile.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382729/original/file-20210205-17-1kkej8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four women on stage, two backing singers - who a woman instructs using a hand gesture and an elder woman foregrounded, singing into a microphone." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382729/original/file-20210205-17-1kkej8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382729/original/file-20210205-17-1kkej8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382729/original/file-20210205-17-1kkej8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382729/original/file-20210205-17-1kkej8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382729/original/file-20210205-17-1kkej8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382729/original/file-20210205-17-1kkej8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382729/original/file-20210205-17-1kkej8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sibongile Khumalo, right, shares a stage with Abigail Kubeka at a memorial for jazz legend Dorothy Masuka in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oupa Bopape/Gallo Images</span></span>
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<h2>Human dignity</h2>
<p>We had some of our richest conversations in the most obscure places, like parking lots, dressing rooms and my favourite space, the basement of her home on a couch next to her black grand piano. Most of the time, I would do the talking and she would sit and listen, not to respond but simply to offer an ear which was more generous and valuable than any form of advice. She always knew that at the end of my venting, I would arrive at my own solution. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sibongile-khumalo-the-transformative-singer-who-built-an-archive-of-south-african-classics-154484">Sibongile Khumalo, the transformative singer who built an archive of South African classics</a>
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<p>As a <a href="http://www.theorbit.co.za/nomfundo-xaluva/">jazz musician</a>, I understand why Sibongile was so adept in this musical idiom. Jazz in an African context represents the collective voices of freedom, unity and emancipation. It is not a ‘one man music’ but rather an art form premised on communal synergies, driven by a desire to express identity, cohesion, human dignity and respect. It is my fervent belief that it was her personhood that sat at the belly of her artistry. </p>
<p>She was not by any means bigger than her craft, she was more than it. She was indisputably good at what she did but, more importantly, she was <em>good</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154648/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nomfundo Xaluva does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>She was the glue that bound younger artists together, helping them navigate the volatile terrain of the music industry.Nomfundo Xaluva, Lecturer, South African College of Music, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1544842021-02-03T14:40:04Z2021-02-03T14:40:04ZSibongile Khumalo, the transformative singer who built an archive of South African classics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382425/original/file-20210204-22-1eyn2y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sibongile Khumalo performing in New York, 2007.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South African singer Sibongile Khumalo (1957-2021) was born into a dynasty of musicians. Her grandfather was a <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-11-02-00-tune-in-to-the-wails-of-maskandi/">maskandi</a> artist. This is a popular form derived from indigenous Zulu music created by migrant labourers, mostly accompanied by an acoustic guitar. Her <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/media/rhodesuniversity/content/ruhome/documents/Ms_Sibongile_Khumalo-Rhodes_09_Grad_Address.pdf">father</a>, <a href="http://www.unizulu.ac.za/unizulu-celebrating-the-legendary-musical-icon-professor-khabi-mngoma/">Khabi Mngoma</a>, was a classical musician, a community builder in Soweto and, ultimately, a music professor at the University of Zululand. </p>
<p>Undoubtedly, it was her mother, Grace Mngoma, who bestowed her with her warm <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/mezzo-soprano">mezzo-soprano/alto</a> voice. In <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/life-and-work-of-khabi-mngoma/oclc/664566793">numerous</a> <a href="https://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/8870">sources</a>, including writer and activist <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/eskia-mphahlele">Es’kia Mpahlele</a>’s memoir <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/311029/down-second-avenue-by-eskia-mphahlele/">Down Second Avenue</a></em>, Grace is mentioned as an alto soloist in productions of Handel’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Messiah-oratorio-by-Handel"><em>Messiah</em></a> that her husband Khabi organised and hosted in Soweto and Johannesburg as far back as the late 1950s. </p>
<p>Sibongile’s brother Lindumuzi, part of the <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=_fwkCIKoTpgC&pg=PA115&lpg=PA115&dq=Khabi+Mngoma+Ionian+Male+Singers&source=bl&ots=NIKcu2yR3o&sig=ACfU3U0mrbqnR1vwoDe2xbapZEfHYvW7PA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj9l8_UtsHuAhUHTRUIHQk-CL0Q6AEwEnoECBEQAg#v=onepage&q=Khabi%20Mngoma%20Ionian%20Male%20Singers&f=false">Ionian Male Choir</a>, plays the cello; her niece <a href="http://www.theorbit.co.za/sibongile-mngoma/">Sibongile Mngoma</a> is a versatile jazz and opera artist. Her son is a violinist, while her daughter sings. Outside the family circle, Sibongile’s earliest choral encounters were in Emily Motsieloa’s Tiny Tots children’s choir. </p>
<p>Notably, then, hers was a talent also nurtured by women musicians at a time when this was unthinkable in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> South Africa. I suggest that it is from this female-centred environment that Sibongile particularly looked out and was always encouraging to young female singers charting their way in the world of opera performance.</p>
<p>It is through her activities in choral music and opera that I particularly wish to celebrate her life and contribution.</p>
<h2>Choral traditions</h2>
<p>Her involvement in choral activities did not decline as an adult. The Ford Choirs competition (now the <a href="https://www.oldmutual.co.za/about/sponsorships/music/national-choir-festival">Old Mutual National Choir Festival</a>) is one of the spaces Sibongile illustriously participated in. This is a competition for community choirs established in 1977 and given direction and shape by her father Khabi. Incidentally, her nephew, Bandile Mngoma, is in the marketing team of the competition through his work at Old Mutual. In the early 1980s she sang with the accomplished Soweto-based <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ImilonjiKaNtuChoralSociety/">Imilonji ka Ntu</a> choral society. Her memorable performances include a 1983 win as part of a double quartet/octet.</p>
<p>Through her involvement in community choirs one can surmise that Sibongile’s close familiarity with the broad range of the South African Black choral repertoire led to her inclusion of classics such as John Knox Bokwe’s <em><a href="https://samap.ukzn.ac.za/plea-africa-southern-african">Plea for Africa</a></em>, Joshua Pulumo Mohapeloa’s <em><a href="https://african-composers-edition.co.za/work/u-ea-kae/">U Ea Kae/Where are you going</a></em>, Michael Moerane’s <em><a href="https://african-composers-edition.co.za/work/della/">Della</a></em> and B.P.J. Tyamzashe’s <em><a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/7CElnCUWqK1cD4ikR4zNOn?highlight=spotify:track:1b2HuAveAQPrta1zlOWqWf">Isithandwa Sam/My Beloved</a></em> to her discography. Even Professor Mzilikazi Khumalo’s first composition <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3--4QQooh24">Ma Ngificwa Ukufa/On My Demise</a></em> gets a brief appearance as part of a medley. </p>
<h2><em>UShaka</em> and Mzilikazi Khumalo</h2>
<p>Though no relation, Sibongile’s collaboration with legendary South African composer and academic <a href="https://www.samroscores.org.za/composer/james-stephen-mzilikazi-khumalo/">Mzilikazi Khumalo</a> is worth dwelling on here. It was in his secular cantanta <em><a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/mzilikazi-khumalos-ushaka/oclc/660129889">UShaka</a></em> that her voice gave the nation and the world a glimpse of the possibilities for classical singing in local vernaculars. </p>
<p>This pioneering work premiered in 1996 with a live broadcast on South Africa’s public broadcaster, SABC TV, and was subsequently recorded in 1997. Community choirs provided the chorus, accompanied by the South African National Symphony Orchestra. Sibongile went on to perform in this work in Europe in 2004 and the USA in 2006.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382426/original/file-20210204-12-pgcr8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Wide shot. A woman dressed in purple, her hair covered by a traditional cloth and wearing glasses, sings into a mic as she reads music that she holds. Opposite her is a conductor in a spotlight and between them an ensemble of classical musicians." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382426/original/file-20210204-12-pgcr8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/382426/original/file-20210204-12-pgcr8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382426/original/file-20210204-12-pgcr8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382426/original/file-20210204-12-pgcr8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382426/original/file-20210204-12-pgcr8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382426/original/file-20210204-12-pgcr8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/382426/original/file-20210204-12-pgcr8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Khumalo performing Philip Miller’s REwind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony based on accounts before South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images</span></span>
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<h2>The songs of Princess Magogo</h2>
<p>Two related outcomes emerged from <em>UShaka</em>, I suggest. The first was the desire of Prof Khumalo, the composer, to have the songs of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/princess-magogo">Princess Magogo KaDinizulu</a> – Zulu princess, poet and composer – adapted for art singing and delivered by Sibongile. To this end, in 2000, he completed the song cycle <em><a href="https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=C4xMigbLKME&list=OLAK5uy_mQY8b-YtxiXnImDO2_jiehGD4YR1H_Cr8">Haya Mntwan’ Omkhulu/Sing Great Princess</a></em> consisting of eight songs of Princess Magogo. The South African Music Rights <a href="https://www.samro.org.za">Organisation</a> appointed composer <a href="http://www.sacm.uct.ac.za/sacm/staff/fulltime/eProfessors/PeterKlatzow">Peter Klatzow</a> to set the music and provide orchestral accompaniment. </p>
<p>This work was particularly revolutionary and transformative. It overhauled the ways of approaching how vocal music was taught in South Africa’s academies over the years. Gradually, there emerged a body of art songs in local languages, telling local stories and revealing the sheer beauty of vernacular poetry. In 2002 <a href="https://www.facebook.com/operaafricapage/">Opera Africa</a> commissioned Prof Khumalo to compose an opera on the story of Princess Magogo. Sibongile featured as the lead. Her performance drew <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/07/arts/opera-review-varied-cultures-entwine-around-a-zulu-princess.html">critical acclaim</a> locally and abroad.</p>
<h2>Contemporary classics</h2>
<p>While Sibongile performed numerous operatic roles with great flair, it is her pioneering work singing South African compositions that I particularly wish to highlight. Her appearance in composer <a href="https://www.philipmiller.co.za">Philip Miller</a>’s 2007 work <em><a href="https://gaudino.williams.edu/past-programming/rewind-a-cantata-for-voice-tape-and-testimony/">REwind</a>: A Cantata for Voice, Tape & Testimony</em>, the libretto of which is created from testimonies before South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Commission</a>, was remarkably poignant and relevant. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-sibongile-khumalo-south-africas-divine-diva-154303">Remembering Sibongile Khumalo, South Africa's divine diva</a>
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<p>Composer and academic <a href="http://www.ndodanabreen.com">Bongani Ndodana-Breen</a>’s 2013 <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2013-07-19-00-idealistic-credo-based-on-spirit-of-the-charter/"><em>Credo</em></a> is crafted from the idealism of the <a href="https://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/hist/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>. This 1955 document contains the principles of freedom and equality that were a driving force in South Africa’s struggle for freedom, finally realised in 1994 with the advent of democracy. As can be expected, not only did Sibongile deliver with aplomb, she embodied these ideals with her mark of experience having lived through apartheid and championed freedom and democracy throughout her adult life through performance and education.</p>
<h2>A prophetic aura</h2>
<p>Thus, in a markedly feminist, decolonial and profoundly transformative way, Sibongile’s voice and persona hold significance in the history of choral and art music in South Africa, especially in the post-apartheid dispensation. </p>
<p>During the Caltex-Sowetan Nation Building massed choir festivals she was a torch bearer and significantly influenced a generation of young people, especially women, to take up opera and classical singing as a career. Young artists and students emulated her example and added into their repertoires some of the songs from <em>Haya Mntwan’ Omkhulu</em> and the arias from the opera <em>Princess Magogo</em>. </p>
<p>Her performances, her stature and of course her classical vocal training helped democratise South African opera, which had been largely far removed from the realities of Black South Africans.</p>
<p>Perhaps, akin to Princess Magogo, there was a strong sense of a prophetic aura in her work. It is hard to imagine her no longer living amongst us, but the “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/01/arts/music/sibongile-khumalo-dead.html">first lady of song</a>” ran her race superbly. We should not mourn Sibongile Khumalo and pave her journey with tears. She gave all she was tasked to bequeath upon us, with joy, kindness, humour and generosity. Her time to join the ancestors had come. <em>Hamba kahle Nomzwilili</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154484/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thembela Vokwana has received funding from NIHSS, NAC, ANFASA, FULBRIGHT, OMT </span></em></p>Both choirs and classical music were childhood influences on a stellar career that would leave behind major new recordings in these areas.Thembela Vokwana, Lecturer, University of Fort HareLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1543032021-01-29T16:36:54Z2021-01-29T16:36:54ZRemembering Sibongile Khumalo, South Africa’s divine diva<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/381374/original/file-20210129-20464-1j25nkc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sibongile Khumalo in New York in 2014, alongside McCoy Mrubata on tenor saxophone.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-01-29-now-she-is-no-more-we-weep-remembering-sibongile-khumalo/">passing</a> of Sibongile Khumalo at the far, far too young age of 63 was a body blow.</p>
<p>Sibongile epitomised ‘the new South Africa’, as it was born and as it matured. She sang in every style – from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Carmen-opera-by-Bizet"><em>Carmen</em></a> to <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/mzilikazi-khumalos-ushaka/oclc/660129889"><em>UShaka</em></a> – with equal accuracy, generosity and joie de vivre, making everything ‘popular’ to millions of people without ever sacrificing vocal or musical professionalism. </p>
<p>This was one of her greatest gifts, that she made a place for everyone with her voice, a golden, melting voice that made all, young and old, rich and poor, professors and farmers, feel ‘at home’. </p>
<p>To paraphrase the closing text of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-d5C7DQzWU">Alto Rhapsody</a>: </p>
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<p>If there is on your psaltery, Father of love, one voice our ears can hear, then refresh our hearts! Open our clouded gaze to the thousand springs next to us who thirst in the wilderness.</p>
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<p>In a world of great voices, hers was a truly great South African voice. In its tonal beauty and through the wide repertoire to which she applied it, Sibongile’s voice represented everyone.</p>
<h2>From choral to classical to jazz</h2>
<p>Sibongile found a place for classical music junkies with a glorious, tremulous <a href="https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=0iZXbKy4ipw&list=OLAK5uy_mQY8b-YtxiXnImDO2_jiehGD4YR1H_Cr8">rendition</a> of Brahms’s <em>Alto Rhapsody</em>.</p>
<p>She made a place for indigenous choral music, with which she was well acquainted since childhood through many choirs and choral competitions and above all through her father, music professor Khabi Mngoma, and his inimitable <a href="https://bit.ly/3ciONaF">Ionian Male Choir</a>. Her unique solo renderings of choral songs, in beautiful arrangements, include John Knox Bokwe’s <em><a href="https://samap.ukzn.ac.za/plea-africa-southern-african">Plea for Africa</a></em>, Joshua Pulumo Mohapeloa’s <em><a href="https://african-composers-edition.co.za/work/u-ea-kae/">U Ea Kae</a></em>, B.P.J. Tyamzashe’s <em><a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/7CElnCUWqK1cD4ikR4zNOn?highlight=spotify:track:1b2HuAveAQPrta1zlOWqWf">Isithandwa Sam</a></em>, and Michael Moerane’s gauntly tragic <em><a href="https://african-composers-edition.co.za/work/della/">Della</a></em>.</p>
<p>She made a place for herself with overwhelming success even in the highly populated area of jazz singing and in a land of great female jazz singers, with numbers such as Strike Vilakazi’s <em><a href="https://africancream.bandcamp.com/track/meadowlands-2">Meadowlands</a></em>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/todd-tozama-matshikiza">Todd Matshikiza</a>’s <em>Back O The Moon</em>, and <a href="https://www.newframe.com/landmarks-in-sa-jazz-yakhalinkomo-and-jolinkomo/">Winston Mankunku’s <em>Yakhal’inkomo</em></a> – which she sings in her own distinctive style and fuses into a unique vocal medley, on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FOi59ojtms">this recording</a>.</p>
<p>Above all, Sibongile did more than any other professional singer of her time to bring African traditional music into the public ear and the popular imagination, onto radio, television and recordings, and into the concert hall. </p>
<p>Again, with the help of magnificent arrangers and composers, she performed and recorded the songs of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/princess-magogo">Princess Constance Magogo KaDinuzulu</a>, which can be heard on tracks 5-12 of one of her most ‘classic’ albums, <a href="https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=C4xMigbLKME&list=OLAK5uy_mQY8b-YtxiXnImDO2_jiehGD4YR1H_Cr8"><em>Sibongile Khumalo</em></a>.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9FOi59ojtms?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Khumalo famously performing the song <em>Yakhal’inkomo</em></span></figcaption>
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<h2>Her life</h2>
<p>Sibongile Khumalo (née Mngoma) was born in Soweto in 1957, the daughter of Khabi and Grace Mngoma. Her father was Professor of Music at the University of Zululand and one of the great conductors and vocal coaches of his generation. He gave Sibongile her first voice lessons. </p>
<p>She qualified at the universities of Zululand and the Witwatersrand in both music and personnel management. She went on to have a distinguished career as a singer as well as an arts advocate and member of numerous national arts committees. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-debates-about-jazz-festivals-should-be-about-more-than-genre-purism-47599">Why debates about jazz festivals should be about more than genre purism</a>
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<p>She sang at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration as South Africa’s president in 1994 and in 2008 she was <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/sibongile-khumalo-1957-%E2%80%93">awarded</a> the Silver Order of Ikhamanga by the president. </p>
<p>Sibongile performed internationally with a number of orchestras and jazz bands. </p>
<p>Among her most memorable albums are <em>Ancient Evenings</em> (1996), <em>Live at the Market Theatre</em> (1998), <em>Sibongile Khumalo</em> (2005) and <em>Sibongile’s Greatest Hits</em> (2006), <em>Sibongile Khumalo Live</em> (2009) and <em>Breath of Life</em> (2016).</p>
<h2>Her voice</h2>
<p>Sibongile’s voice was officially mezzo but she commanded an enormous range, both in pitch and expression. She could become a soprano and a contralto, at will, and explore profound vocal contrasts. </p>
<p>No other professional singer, for example, has captured the husky, throaty low register of Zulu <em>umakweyana</em> and <a href="https://iamtranscriptions.org/iam-sheet-music/musical-bows/ugubhu-2/"><em>ugubhu</em></a> bow singers. Perhaps the reason for this is that she heard Princess Magogo herself perform, at her homestead in Nongoma, when she was about 13. As she described it in the sleeve notes of <em>Sibongile Khumalo</em>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My dad made me sit at her feet to listen to her play ugubhu and sing. At the time it did not make sense, but I had to obey. I thought he was being very unkind to me because all the other children were out in the yard playing. It must have been destiny. In my professional years the music came back and it began to make sense. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>She also described how South African playwright and film producer Duma Ndlovu, who had been in exile for many years, challenged her to include this material in her repertoire and she took the bait. </p>
<p>She approached the South African Music Rights Organisation to have the music commissioned and they approached <a href="https://samro.org.za/news/articles/prof-mzilikazi-khumalo-honoured-wits-university">Professor Mzilikazi Khumalo</a>, who arranged eight songs from Magogo’s very extensive repertoire, and <a href="http://www.sacm.uct.ac.za/sacm/staff/fulltime/eProfessors/PeterKlatzow">Professor Peter Klatzow</a>, who first created a piano accompaniment and later orchestrated the song cycle.</p>
<p>Sibongile made everyone love her – no mean feat in the world of singers, especially opera singers. She was a prima donna, although not in temperament, and was most certainly South Africa’s ‘diva’.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/154303/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christine Lucia does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>She was a vocalist who sang in every style – from Carmen to UShaka – with equal mastery, popularising classical forms and epitomising ‘the new South Africa’.Christine Lucia, Extraordinary Professor, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1514842020-12-08T14:46:09Z2020-12-08T14:46:09ZNearly half of South Africa’s live music workers may quit the industry for good<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373322/original/file-20201207-17-1giqgk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Drummer Jason Moser records a live-streamed performance in a South African theatre during lockdown.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Alet Pretorius/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For people working in South Africa’s live music sector, 2020 has been “devastating”. That was the term that researchers read most frequently in responses to the country’s largest-ever live music and COVID-19 <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/article/sa-cultural-observatory-releases-report-on-the-impact-of-covid-19-live-music-sector">survey</a>, published in November. As one respondent put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have lost everything. All income, accommodation – everything.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The study, called Impact Analysis: Live Music and its Venues and the South African Economy During COVID-19, was undertaken by the <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/about-us">South African Cultural Observatory</a>, a government project hosted at Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth. Its job is to track the socio-economic impact of the arts and creative industries. <a href="https://www.iksafrica.com">IKS Cultural Consulting</a> was commissioned to carry out the survey and Andre le Roux and I were the lead researchers.</p>
<p>We created an online questionnaire that built on the Cultural Observatory’s early <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/article/an-early-assessment-of-the-impact-of-the-covid-19-crisis-on-the-cultural-and-creative-industries-in-south-africa">assessment</a> of the pandemic’s impact on the country’s cultural and creative industries. </p>
<p>The study was both quantitative – to determine larger trends and numbers – and qualitative, including questionnaire items and eight in-depth case studies. We received 697 responses. These provided detailed information about live music workers’ experiences and their sense-making. We found that nearly half our respondents contemplate quitting live music for good.</p>
<h2>A devastated value chain</h2>
<p>The people we surveyed worry about the longer term impact of the pandemic on audiences and society, and about their own ability to operate in the absence of an integrated national recovery plan. Of the musicians surveyed, 41% report selling their instruments and equipment to pay their bills; others are living on loans that will need to be repaid.</p>
<p>Our respondents come from all South Africa’s provinces (with Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal dominating). They work along all segments of the music value chain (from musicians, organisers, roadies and sound engineers to key venue workers). They cover all music genres. They include respondents like one, whose “bread and butter activity” is recording choirs and traditional music groups who travel from distant provinces. But all activity stopped and “the entire fraternity is at home wearing a mask”. </p>
<p>Our data presents a highly interconnected value chain, where single venues and other music delivery mechanisms such as cultural tourism operations and music circuit organisers serve as hubs for multiple artists. The loss of one venue has an impact on work and revenue opportunities for musicians as well as related service workers. Work creation (and recovery) depends on a large cohort of small and often informal employers initiating a sustained series of short-term projects.</p>
<p>From March until very recently, most of that stopped and 90% of the live music industry lost income due to COVID-19. Says one musician:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was like skittles going down. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>One in four respondents said they weren’t able to continue with any elements of their business under lockdown. Even with the current easing of lockdown, which post-dates the survey, venues – which often also serve as restaurants and bars – are constrained by <a href="https://www.gov.za/covid-19/resources/regulations-and-guidelines-coronavirus-covid-19">rules</a> on admissions, hours and service.</p>
<p>Most respondents have been in the industry for more than five years, but experience has proved no protection.</p>
<h2>Imperfect new digital strategies</h2>
<p>There’s a stereotype of the music industry as sleepy. We found the opposite. Musicians, promoters and venue owners responded to the crisis fast and flexibly. Like their overseas counterparts, 88% are adopting new online music strategies. One gospel promoter said they would use online platforms to sell and distribute music, “but it will not yield the same amount of revenue we are used to”. Their audience is often rural and elderly, with limited access to digital networks for live streaming music.</p>
<p>Despite this agility, many of those who are employers have had to end short term contracts (23%), retrench employees (13%) or cut salaries (18%). Only 6% say they can continue to pay everybody they work with.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373578/original/file-20201208-22-zh9006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="In a village square, people sit wearing masks at a distance from one another, their seating area marketed by ropes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373578/original/file-20201208-22-zh9006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373578/original/file-20201208-22-zh9006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373578/original/file-20201208-22-zh9006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373578/original/file-20201208-22-zh9006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373578/original/file-20201208-22-zh9006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373578/original/file-20201208-22-zh9006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373578/original/file-20201208-22-zh9006.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Capetonians attend a socially distanced jazz event in November.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nic Bothma/EPA-EFE</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Government COVID-19 <a href="https://www.gov.za/covid-19/companies-and-employees/support-business">relief support</a> requires formal documentation. But because of the predominantly informal and project-based nature of music-related work, many people were unable or ineligible to apply. Asks one:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All of my work was confirmed on email with contracts pending … how can I claim any proof? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Only 7% reported successful applications for the various small to medium enterprise support mechanisms and only 21% for the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture <a href="http://www.dac.gov.za/content/department-sport-arts-and-culture-covid-19-relief-fund-update">relief</a> <a href="https://www.gov.za/speeches/arts-and-culture-extends-applications-submissions-covid-19-relief-fund-9-sep-2020-0000">funding</a>.</p>
<h2>Conditionally hopeful</h2>
<p>Yet close to half of our respondents, perhaps surprisingly, categorise themselves as conditionally hopeful.</p>
<p>What they need, they say, is flexible, integrated support (both financial and in-kind) across administrative boundaries and government portfolios. In contrast to prevailing official practice, weighted towards prestigious mega events, they want decentralisation of programmes, projects and infrastructure. They stress a need to focus on the local – from <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/trending/artists-up-in-arms-over-local-content-quota-on-radio-20200503">compliance</a> with local content quotas to funding of local music initiatives and performance spaces. “Restart community initiatives,” pleads one. </p>
<p>National and local governments and parastatals control many spaces – recording studios for live streaming; parks and squares for safer open-air concerts – our respondents point out. Granting bureaucracy-free access to these could kick-start revenue generation, particularly if accompanied by support to access digital equipment and training in using it.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-lockdown-live-streams-working-for-south-africas-musicians-144946">Are lockdown live streams working for South Africa's musicians?</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>But <a href="http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/Report-03-10-19/Report-03-10-192017.pdf">inequality</a>, and especially the country’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/digital-equality-south-africa-still-has-a-long-way-to-go-131864">digital divide</a>, bar many respondents from such innovation, especially those in rural areas. An organiser of live music in township communities says: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our modus operandi is to bring music to the people. And if you think about where the people are, internet isn’t great there.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>What’s to be done?</h2>
<p>To remedy all this, our respondents say they desperately need an informed, listening ear from government as much as they need financial grants. </p>
<p>Many responses describe perceptions and experiences of inefficiency, ineffectiveness and lack of practical industry understanding among officials at all levels, in all structures, as well as concerns about corruption and bias. </p>
<p>But it’s not only government that needs to be listening.</p>
<p>The plight of live music mapped in the South African Cultural Observatory study should concern anyone looking to the return of South Africa’s diverse live music scene, and the employment, <a href="https://www.southafricanculturalobservatory.org.za/article/sa-s-cultural-goods-exports-growing-faster-than-imports-research">export revenue</a> and joy it creates. </p>
<p>In South Africa’s live music industry, January to Easter is always the dry season. People normally survive by setting aside earnings from the previous three quarters. The unique circumstances of 2020 sabotaged this in two big ways. </p>
<p>Relief funding was designed to cover cancellations in the first quarter – but most musicians hadn’t confirmed all their bookings by then. And from April onwards, during lockdown, there have been minimal earnings. If 2020 was dry, January to Easter 2021 will be the Sahara desert.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151484/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell consults to IKS Cultural Consulting, which was commissioned by the South African Cultural Observatory to conduct and report on this research. She co-led the IKS research team </span></em></p>The plight of live music mapped in the new survey should concern anyone looking to the return of the country’s diverse live music scene.Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1487812020-10-29T15:34:36Z2020-10-29T15:34:36ZHow viral song Jerusalema joined the ranks of South Africa’s greatest hits<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/366522/original/file-20201029-19-1q6i13g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A group of colleagues taking up the viral #JerusalemaDanceChallenge in Cape Town.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">NIC BOTHMA/EPA-EFE</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There’s something seemingly novel about a song from South Africa going viral to the extent that the 2019 house music song <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZVL_8D048">Jerusalema</a></em> has done in 2020. The song is performed by musician and producer <a href="https://briefly.co.za/32929-master-kg-biography-age-real-awards-songs-albums.html">Master KG</a> and vocalist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/07/nomcebo-the-voice-behind-jerusalema-south-africas-global-hit">Nomcebo Zikode</a>.</p>
<p>Apart from the song’s omnipresence on the sound systems of a cross-section of socio-economic neighbourhoods across South Africa, it has become a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/sep/24/jerusalema-dance-craze-brings-hope-from-africa-to-the-world-amid-covid">viral dance phenomenon</a>, drawing in a diverse global audience. Internationally, politicians, sports stars, priests, nuns and monks, shop attendants, healthcare workers and infinite other global citizens have posted countless videos of themselves participating in group dancing, accepting the <em>Jerusalema</em> dance challenge. </p>
<p>As much as the song has captured <a href="https://scroll.in/article/975720/jerusalema-why-a-south-african-song-has-become-the-soundtrack-to-a-world-in-lockdown">global attention</a>, it has also inspired curiosity among those already familiar with the repetitive, slower, four-to-a-bar beat of <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/south-african-house-songs-10-best/">South African house</a> music. Many are trying to figure out what makes <em>Jerusalema</em> so exceptional in its popularity. A frequent question in my social circles is, why this song? </p>
<p>Why, when there have been so many other similar uplifting local dance hits, does this song have such a potent viral capacity that’s broken download <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2020/09/10/master-kg-s-jerusalema-now-most-shazamed-song-in-the-world">records</a> and received over 200 million clicks on the official music video to date?</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The official music video for Jerusalema.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The song also befuddles because it seems to have fallen outside of the traditional South African summer dance release trajectory, which usually means that such songs get endless airplay throughout the holidays and then their ubiquity dies down. Instead <em>Jerusalema</em> kept growing in popularity during the national COVID-19 lockdown. This should give us a clue about its particular significance.</p>
<h2>South Africa’s greatest hits</h2>
<p>Few South African songs have achieved this kind of global status and these have been tied to political or historical moments that enabled their popularity and spread. Three other songs come to mind. </p>
<p>The first is <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrrQT4WkbNE">Mbube</a></em>, written by <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/solomon-popoli-linda-singer-and-composer-dies">Solomon Linda</a> and performed with his troupe the Evening Birds in the 1930s. <em>Mbube</em> was misinterpreted as <em>Wimoweh</em> almost at once by American folk singer Peter Seeger. Since then it has become a multi-generational staple in stage productions and Hollywood <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I82PFHKgY2c">films</a> and covered by numerous bands around the world. The success of what is now known as <em>Wimoweh (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)</em> was possible because of its <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/in-the-jungle-inside-the-long-hidden-genealogy-of-the-lion-sleeps-tonight-108274/">exploitation</a> of Linda’s labour and intellectual property rights. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-angolan-dancers-who-helped-south-african-anthem-jerusalema-go-global-148782">The Angolan dancers who helped South African anthem Jerusalema go global</a>
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<p>Another prominent song was Miriam Makeba’s infectious dance hit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNeP3hrm__k"><em>Pata Pata</em></a> during the height of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> in the 1960s. Its popularity in Africa, Europe, North America and other parts of the world was enabled not only by her fame as a singer but also by her <a href="https://www.npr.org/transcripts/96869377">political activism</a> and networks against the apartheid regime. </p>
<p>The South African hits emanating from Paul Simon’s <em>Graceland</em> album – like Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/of-strong-winds-heavy-hearts-and-joseph-shabalala-telling-the-south-african-story-131848"><em>Homeless</em></a> – were incredibly popular in Europe and North America. But they were similarly riding the wave of rebellion. By making the album with black South African musicians, Simon defied apartheid, but also disregarded the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-africas-academic-and-cultural-boycott">cultural boycott</a> of South Africa. So Simon’s fame plus <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/apr/19/paul-simon-graceland-acclaim-outrage">cumulative factors</a> helped make <em>Graceland</em> a hit album.</p>
<h2>The art of crossing over</h2>
<p><em>Jerusalema</em> is in good company. Its popularity comes not only at a time when songs with a dance sequence often have a viral life, like Drake’s online hit <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRS_PpOrUZ4&list=PL0bYCsuYO8hg28V_EcMDziM5p7V65ieYU&index=554">In My Feelings</a></em> or the pre-internet <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMRVbhbIkjk">Macarena</a></em> by Los Del Rio. Beyond this, <em>Jerusalema</em>’s message of seeking guidance and protection towards a spiritual <a href="https://www.theelephant.info/ideas/2020/10/16/another-now-why-the-jerusalema-dance-challenge-reveals-a-longing-to-re-imagine-the-world/">home</a> in a turbulent time is also relevant for this historical moment.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">#JerusalemaDanceChallenge in Italy.</span></figcaption>
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<p><em>Jerusalema</em> went viral during the isolation and loss caused by <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/covid-19">COVID-19</a> lockdowns world-wide. It has resonated with people who may not <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/jerusalema-global-dance-hit-south-africa-spotify-1076474/">understand</a> the isiZulu lyrics, but understand its inherent religious theme, because of associations with the biblical city Jerusalem. This translates anywhere Christianity plays a social or institutional role, making the song resonate beyond its danceability.</p>
<p>And this makes <em>Jerusalema</em> another successful crossover – a popular house music song that also manages to be a gospel song. Many crossover songs go viral because they straddle target audiences in different genres. What is interesting is that in South Africa, gospel music traditionally outsells most other popular music genres. The song has essentially penetrated this large market but also had an impact on local music market benchmarks. It not only offers catchy dance music and a relatable message, it also makes local market history for gospel-dance fusion.</p>
<h2>A bridge to soft power</h2>
<p>It is also not entirely surprising that the viral dance sequence associated with <em>Jerusalema</em> came from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=613A9d6Doac">Angola</a>. Dance music is popular in Angola, with local styles like <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2019/05/29/kizomba-dance-an-angolan-celebration">kizomba</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2012/12/26/167628341/kuduro-the-dance-that-keeps-angola-going">kuduro</a>. Angola also has well-established European networks due to its political history. So, the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge became a bridge to the rest of the continent, the African diaspora and Europe. The viral life of the song has given Master KG access to elusive global music markets.</p>
<p>This serves up another question over the song: what does <em>Jerusalema</em> say about South Africa’s <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2004-05-01/soft-power-means-success-world-politics">soft power</a>? For the moment, the song has made the country prominent on the world map. But soft power is earned and not achieved overnight. Governments build networks over time through recurring formal and informal cultural diplomacy programmes to nurture an attractive image of their nations abroad. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">#JerusalemaDanceChallenge in Kenya.</span></figcaption>
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<p>South Africa also has soft power intentions it pursues through the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture’s occasional <a href="http://www.dac.gov.za/content/cultural-diplomacy-pillar-our-international-relations">cultural diplomacy</a> programmes. The department often sponsors big-name local house deejays to travel to international industry conferences. Cultural diplomacy involves artists actually interacting with foreign audiences and not only building networks with institutions. Musicians need to be supported through infrastructure in building consumer audiences abroad. </p>
<p>Some questions remain. How will South Africa capitalise on the popularity of <em>Jerusalema</em> for its soft power-related goals? Is it enough to simply name the musicians responsible for the hit as our cultural ambassadors abroad? </p>
<p>The viral popularity of <em>Jerusalema</em> is interesting on a number of levels, but mostly because it has superseded expectations of what a local house music song can do.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Through the University of Fort Hare, Akhona Ndzuta receives funding from the NRF.</span></em></p>Like Pata-Pata, Homeless and Mbube, the song Jerusalema is elevated by a historical moment in time and has the power to cross over to different audiences.Akhona Ndzuta, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Fort HareLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1487822020-10-29T15:34:23Z2020-10-29T15:34:23ZThe Angolan dancers who helped South African anthem Jerusalema go global<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/365725/original/file-20201027-17-l9jbrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Angolan dance troupe Fenómenos do Semba.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy Adilson Maiza for Fenómenos do Semba</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In February the Angolan dance troupe Fenómenos do Semba created the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/jerusalemadancechallenge?f=video">viral</a> #JerusalemaDanceChallenge <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=613A9d6Doac&feature=emb_title">video</a> that showed off their dance moves to the South African <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/jerusalema-global-dance-hit-south-africa-spotify-1076474/">hit</a> song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCZVL_8D048&feature=emb_title"><em>Jerusalema</em></a>. Their video is set in a backyard in Luanda, where they break into a group dance, all the while eating lunch from plates in their hands. </p>
<p>In the age of coronavirus, the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge video <a href="https://scroll.in/article/975720/jerusalema-why-a-south-african-song-has-become-the-soundtrack-to-a-world-in-lockdown">generated</a> a counter-contagion. Almost overnight everyone from police departments in Africa to priests in Europe were posting their own <em>Jerusalema</em> dance videos that repeated the choreography. </p>
<p>The challenge videos were swept along in a message of <a href="https://www.theelephant.info/ideas/2020/10/16/another-now-why-the-jerusalema-dance-challenge-reveals-a-longing-to-re-imagine-the-world/">hope</a> condensed in the single word “Jerusalema” and amplified through an electronic beat that its creator, Johannesburg-based musician and producer <a href="https://briefly.co.za/32929-master-kg-biography-age-real-awards-songs-albums.html">Master KG</a>, describes as “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWzu9REdiz8">spiritual</a>”.</p>
<p>Putting together this beat in November 2019, he invited South African gospel vocalist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/07/nomcebo-the-voice-behind-jerusalema-south-africas-global-hit">Nomcebo Zikode</a> to interpret it lyrically. The magic isiZulu phrase “Jerusalema, ikhaya lami” (Jerusalem is my home) arose through their jamming. Then the Angolans provided an irresistible choreography, and the rest is history. </p>
<p>The Angolan dance routine is both just repetitive enough to be picked up and just varied enough to tease. Videos flew around the world on <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/tag/jerusalemadancechallenge?source=h5_m">TikTok</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/jerusalemadancechallenge/?hl=en">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2653686454852808">Facebook</a>. Like the urge to dance to “the earliest Ragtime songs” described by Ishmael Reed in his novel <em><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2017/aug/01/mumbo-jumbo-a-penguin-classic-2017-ishmael-reed">Mumbo Jumbo</a></em>, the dance challenge, too, “jes grew”. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/613A9d6Doac?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Angolan troupe Fenómenos do Semba’s Jerusalema dance challenge.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The gift of moving collectively</h2>
<p>So how did it “just grow”? </p>
<p>“We are happy to bring the joy of dance to the whole world through this marvellous dance,” (Estamos felizes por levar a alegria da dança para o mundo inteiro atraves desta dança maravilhosa) Fenómenos do Semba declare in Portuguese on their Facebook <a href="https://www.facebook.com/fenomenosdosemba/?ref=page_internal">page</a>. </p>
<p>What they call “alegria da dança” (the joy of the dance) can also be read as “alegropolitics” or joy pressed out from trauma and dehumanisation. Historically, enslavement, colonialism, commodification and a continuing threat to Black life brings forth Afro-Atlantic <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14788810.2019.1708159">expressive culture </a>. </p>
<p>This is seen from <a href="https://www.riocarnaval.org/rio-carnival/what-is">carnivals</a> to the viral <a href="https://medium.com/@travelinghopper/what-is-dont-rush-challenge-7bb392c7095b">Don’t Rush Challenge</a>, started during coronavirus lockdowns by a group of <a href="https://techpoint.africa/2020/04/17/interview-with-nigerian-co-creator-of-the-dont-rush-challenge/">African heritage</a> women where each dances to a hip-hop song and uses technology to “pass” a makeup brush to another. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-viral-song-jerusalema-joined-the-ranks-of-south-africas-greatest-hits-148781">How viral song Jerusalema joined the ranks of South Africa's greatest hits</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This gift to the world is the secret of moving collectively. Not in cookie-cutter unison but through individual response to poly-rhythmic Africanist aesthetic principles that are held together by a master-structure. Dancing in this way is resistance, incorporating kinetic and rhythmic principles that circulated initially around the Atlantic rim (including the Americas, Europe, the Caribbean and Africa). It connects and revitalises by enacting an embodied memory of resistance to enslavement. </p>
<p>The <em>Jerusalema</em> dance challenge is an example of how dance enables convivencia (living together). It is a line dance (animation in French, animação in Portuguese, animación in Spanish) that enlivens parties through simple choreography that makes people dance together. Routines involve directional movement enabled by switching of feet, with dancers turning 90 degrees to repeat the choreography. Syncopated steps create enjoyable tension, and more and more people can join as the routine repeats itself till the song ends.</p>
<h2>Viral African line dances</h2>
<p>Many internet-driven <a href="https://www.redbull.com/za-en/music/a-history-of-afropop-dance-crazes">line dances</a> have emerged in response to songs such as <em>Jerusalema</em>. Created by popular music producers in Africa, they are often operating with limited resources and responding to national music trends that also have a pan-continental appeal. Think of Ghanaian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/03/ghana-azonto-dance-craze-world">azonto</a>, Nigerian <a href="https://www.wonderlandmagazine.com/2020/05/21/best-afrobeats-dances-lockdown/">Afro-beat</a>; Angolan <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2012/12/26/167628341/kuduro-the-dance-that-keeps-angola-going">kuduro</a>; South African <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/south-african-house-songs-10-best/">house</a>. </p>
<p>The dances that develop from the music start out local but can spread from country to country. Choreographies to Ghanaian azonto hits, for example, are taught by dance instructors from Accra when they’re visiting dance clubs in Cotonou in Benin – as I experienced during years of <a href="http://www.modernmoves.org.uk/ouidah-memory-movement-pythons-mermaids-ananya-kabir/">dance research</a> in West Africa.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fCZVL_8D048?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The official Jerusalema video, viewed over 200 million times to date.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Videos shared via WhatsApp also enable such “urban” dance styles to jump borders. This is how a member of Fenómenos do Semba received a sample of <em>Jerusalema</em> from South African friends and shared it with his team. According to group leader Adilson Maiza, they loved it as soon as they heard it. To create a line dance choreography to a song from Johannesburg, these dancers from Luanda dipped freely into the vast reservoir of different African accents of dancing to Afro-beat music.</p>
<h2>Angola’s rich dance culture</h2>
<p>These accents include their own. Angola’s rich social dance culture has gone global through the couple dances <a href="https://medium.com/dance-card/what-is-kizomba-b6700eaa063d">kizomba</a> and the more upbeat <a href="http://socialdancecommunity.com/9-reasons-you-should-be-dancing-semba/">semba</a>. A DJ will periodically break up dancing couples with a track that unites the crowd through line dance routines that gesture to the Angolan music and dance style <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/europe/portugal/lisbon/articles/a-brief-introduction-to-kuduro/">kuduro</a>: hyper-exaggerated, angular, dexterous, sardonic. Kuduro steps are hard. To make the routines easier to pick up, they’re mixed with generic Afro-beat dance steps.</p>
<p>Maiza asserts that the <em>Jerusalema</em> choreography mixes kuduro and Afro-beat. Others in the Angolan dance scene disagree, pointing to videos of South African <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/oct/08/pantsula-dance-south-africa-via-kanana">pantsula</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/aug/11/kwaito-south-africa-house">kwaito</a> that reveal similar footwork. Master KG himself <a href="http://www.novojornal.co.ao/cultura/interior/jerusalema-tornou-se-um-fenomeno-musical-planetario-gracas-a-um-video-feito-por-jovens-angolanos-reconhece-o-autor-94679.html">declared</a> that what the Angolan group made viral was a South African dance style popular at celebrations. <a href="http://www.novojornal.co.ao/cultura/interior/jerusalema-tornou-se-um-fenomeno-musical-planetario-gracas-a-um-video-feito-por-jovens-angolanos-reconhece-o-autor-94679.html">Citing him</a>, magazine <em>Novo Jornal</em> observes that the <em>Jerusalema</em> choreography nonetheless transmits an undeniable Angolan touch. It’s what Maiza interprets as signature “ginga e banga Angolana” (Angolan sway and swag).</p>
<p>Ginga, banga, kizomba, semba, kuduro: all Angolan words for dance styles and attitudes that, like line dances, emerge from long circum-Atlantic conversations. Line dances criss-cross the Atlantic, complicating the line between recognition and appropriation. The Danza Kuduro dance was set to a Spanish-language song responding to a Puerto Rican hit. There was the Macarena dance (Spain and Venezuela) and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jun/11/how-the-electric-slide-became-the-black-lives-matter-protest-dance">Electric Slide</a> (US and Jamaica).</p>
<h2>A way to build community</h2>
<p>Instead of understanding the <em>Jerusalema</em> dance challenge as an intra-African phenomenon, it’s maybe more useful to understand it in terms of ongoing <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/creolisation">creolisation</a> processes – a mixing of cultures – that spiral around the Atlantic rim. Multi-directional, unpredictable, but always innovative, creolisation is the motor of the “alegropolitics” of African-heritage music and dance. If the Angolan video popularised the South African anthem, this is a collaborative and competitive creolising phenomenon.</p>
<p>As Fenómenos do Semba morph effortlessly from eating together to dancing together, they draw on deep and resonant reservoirs of Afro-Atlantic survival through joy. The dancers’ hangout is the Angolan quintal or backyard, a hub of activity during long, curfewed nights of unending <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/angolan-civil-war-1975-2002-brief-history">civil war</a>. However, they are eating cachupa, a typical Cape Verdean dish frequently used as a symbol for creolisation. </p>
<p>Like the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2020/jun/11/how-the-electric-slide-became-the-black-lives-matter-protest-dance">revival of line dances</a> during the Black Lives Matter protests, <em>Jerusalema</em> went viral during the coronavirus pandemic because the dance challenge enacted a simple way to connect and build community: especially at a time when people were hungering for these possibilities. </p>
<p>A South African singer’s call, “Zuhambe nami” (join me) was realised through an Angolan dance group’s brainwave to use cachupa to demonstrate that, in Maiza’s words: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is possible to be happy with little: we party with very little.
(É possível ser feliz mesmo com pouco: com pouco fizemos a nossa festa.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And, with just the resources of the body, the locked-down world partied too, for the duration of the dance.</p>
<p><em>Obrigada to Nikolett Hamvas, Adilson Maiza, Rui Djassi Moracén.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148782/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ananya Jahanara Kabir receives funding from the European Research Council, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and King's College London. </span></em></p>During the coronavirus pandemic the Jerusalema dance challenge enacted a way for communities to connect - repetitive enough to be picked up and varied enough to tease.Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Professor of English Literature, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1449572020-09-09T15:25:39Z2020-09-09T15:25:39ZSouth African singer Nakhane redefines ideas of masculinity<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355337/original/file-20200828-24-sirc9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alon Skuy/Sunday Times/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South African singer-songwriter <a href="http://nakhaneofficial.com">Nakhane</a> is a breakout South African artist who, with the release of his first album <em>Brave Confusion</em> in 2013 established himself as gender nonconforming. He soon added to his music output by acting in films – such as the controversial LGBTI-themed <a href="http://www.inxeba.com"><em>Inxeba</em></a> – and also publishing a novel. </p>
<p>The clichéd adage “boys will be boys” has, over the ages, normalised unbecoming behaviours. It has also socialised young men into thinking that being a man could entail getting away with reckless behaviour, even the use of violence and aggression to assert power.</p>
<p>In her analysis of violent masculinities in post-apartheid South Africa, feminist scholar <a href="https://aalbc.com/authors/author.php?author_name=Pumla+Dineo+Gqola">Pumla Gqola</a> explains in her book <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-09-25-review-rape-a-south-african-nightmare/"><em>Rape: A South African Nightmare</em></a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Violent masculinities create a public space consciousness in which violence is not just acceptable and justified, but also natural and desirable. They glamorise violence in a variety of masking manoeuvres that seduce spectators into mythologising violence.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The disturbingly <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/30/coronavirus-lockdown-femicide-rises-south-africa/">high levels</a> of femicide, rape and domestic violence in South Africa make a compelling scenario for thinking of what it means to be a man.</p>
<p>Nakhane’s work provides us with one way of thinking about what it means to be a man.</p>
<p><a href="http://nakhaneofficial.com/">Nakhane</a> has to date released two musical albums: <a href="https://soundcloud.com/justmusicsouthafrica/sets/nakhane-toure-brave-confusion"><em>Brave Confusion</em></a> (2013) and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/arts/music/nakhane-you-will-not-die.html"><em>You Will Not Die</em></a> (2018). They (the artist’s preferred pronoun) are the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLZswukO4pE">author</a> of the novel <a href="2015"></a><a href="https://blackbirdbooks.africa/product/piggy-boys-blues/"><em>Piggy Boy’s Blues</em></a>. They have also featured as the lead actor in the film <a href="http://www.inxeba.com/"><em>Inxeba/The Wound</em></a> (2017).</p>
<p>I <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/18125980.2015.1127622?needAccess=true">analysed</a> how Nakhane’s music challenges simplistic definitions of masculinity. Their body of artistic work shows that there is no one single definition of masculinity. </p>
<p>Nakhane themself states in <a href="https://giramatans.wordpress.com/2018/06/27/the-violence-of-compulsory-heterosexuality-a-review-of-inxeba/">an interview</a> that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s no homogeneous idea of what masculinity is, there never was, and there never will be.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nakhane’s body of work, through its very public focus on queer masculinity, redefines what being a man is.</p>
<h2>No less of a man</h2>
<p>Nakhane’s artistic oeuvre makes visible marginalised masculine identities. </p>
<p>For example, in the album <em>Brave Confusion</em>, the singer-songwriter illustrates that there isn’t a distinct meaning of being a man or experiencing manhood – or even of gay masculinity. They demonstrate that being gay should not be in any way a reason to belittle any kinds of displays of queer masculinities. Nakhane’s songs, particularly their music videos, present a queer masculinity that is comfortable in its vulnerability and lack of machismo. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or6PmoX5BOM">video</a> to the song <em>In The Dark Room</em> (2013) presents Nakhane being gently caressed by another man. The two then dance together.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ucfuAffsIjE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Nakhane - Clairvoyant (Official Video).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The video to the song <em>Clairvoyant</em> (2017) presents two naked black men who are comfortable in their skins and masculinities. The performance of masculinity in this video is tender, but in no way feminising. This contrasts the hard manly expression of masculinity that is expected by heteropatriarchal strictures. This emergent masculinity presents itself as not inferior to the culturally idealised masculinity. It presents itself as complete and valid in its own right.</p>
<h2>More than a circumcision rite</h2>
<p>In one of the opening scenes of the film <em>Inxeba</em>, a group of young men undergoes <a href="https://ulwaluko.co.za/Home.html"><em>ulwaluko</em></a>, a traditional rite of passage for the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/xhosa">Xhosa people</a> of South Africa. As their foreskins are removed, older men compel them to shout out, “I am a man”. <em>Ulwaluko</em> serves as a rite of passage from boyhood to manhood. In <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/Archives/City-Press/The-Interview-Nakhane-Toure-rewrites-the-passage-rites-20150429">an interview</a>, Nakhane explains that the <em>ulwaluko</em> process, often referred to as ‘going to the mountain’, is important in the society from which he comes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I am Xhosa and there’s a huge spotlight on masculinity and what it means to be a man in the Eastern Cape. So I did everything. I went through the rites of passage of being Xhosa. I went to the mountain.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Psychologist and masculinity scholar Kopano Ratele clarifies that such <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tesg.12233">cultural practices</a> are important in the construction of masculinity. </p>
<p><em>Inxeba</em> shows that the construction of masculinity involves the use of violence and aggression to assert one’s manliness. In several scenes in the film, the initiates engage in stick fights. They also look down on one initiate, Kwanda, whom they call “<em>is'tabane</em>”, a derogatory isiXhosa word for homosexual. Moreover, masculinity also comprises a perceived feminisation of emotions such as love. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0idwRX0d6nM?wmode=transparent&start=8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Inxeba.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Men, the film demonstrates, are expected to be emotionally distant and self-determining. To have successfully transitioned from boyhood to manhood, a young man is expected to perform specific scripts of masculinity deemed to be desirable. The film shows that <em>ulwaluko</em> is, among other factors, a breeding ground of violent masculinities, homophobia and misogyny. Fearing that he will be outed as gay, Xolani – the character played by Nakhane – takes violent action against Kwanda in the climactic scene. This highlights how gay masculinities also perform the scripts of violence that are not different from those enacted by straight men. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-the-award-winning-film-inxeba-isnt-a-disrespectful-gay-sex-romp-92462">No, the award-winning film Inxeba isn't a disrespectful gay sex romp</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>However, Xolani also shows that one can successfully go through <em>ulwaluko</em> and not necessarily subscribe to the prescribed form of masculinity that the traditional ceremony seeks to inculcate. Xolani is neither aggressive nor violent in performing his masculinity. He is soft-spoken and in touch with his emotions. He readily shows emotional vulnerability in his relationships with the other protagonists. </p>
<h2>An alternative space</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356985/original/file-20200908-18-tfgryn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover with a nature-inspired illustration showing leaves and butterflies." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356985/original/file-20200908-18-tfgryn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/356985/original/file-20200908-18-tfgryn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356985/original/file-20200908-18-tfgryn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356985/original/file-20200908-18-tfgryn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356985/original/file-20200908-18-tfgryn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1176&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356985/original/file-20200908-18-tfgryn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1176&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/356985/original/file-20200908-18-tfgryn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1176&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BlackBird Books</span></span>
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<p>Nakhane’s body of artistic work shows that there are other forms of masculinity which are not toxic. Their music, novel and the film they starred in reveal that one can be a man and not be hypermasculine or aggressively violent. </p>
<p>In so doing, Nakhane’s artistic work creates an alternative space to discuss what masculinity means. Their work gestures towards liberating masculinity from the exacting definitions idealised in patriarchal societies. </p>
<p>The narrator in <em>Piggy Boy’s Blues</em> explains: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some men are born to fight, and others … well, they’re born to love. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nakhane’s work suggests that men should not be raised to be aggressive fighters. Instead, men can be more attuned to their emotions. They do not need to use violence to assert their manliness.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144957/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gibson Ncube does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The artist’s body of work, through its very public focus on queer masculinity, offers alternative ways of thinking about what being a man is.Gibson Ncube, Associate Professor, University of ZimbabweLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.