tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/ladysmith-black-mambazo-82592/articlesLadysmith Black Mambazo – The Conversation2020-10-29T15:34:36Ztag: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>
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<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>
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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/1326712020-03-18T14:31:12Z2020-03-18T14:31:12ZWhat inspired Joseph Shabalala’s genius - in his own words<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320090/original/file-20200312-111253-1wcxwdj.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">Paul Warner/WireImage</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Joseph Shabalala was the leader of the internationally renowned <a href="https://mambazo.com/">Ladysmith Black Mambazo</a>, and the best-known exponent of the unaccompanied male choral style known as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/isicathamiya">isicathamiya</a>. Appropriately, tributes following his <a href="https://theconversation.com/of-strong-winds-heavy-hearts-and-joseph-shabalala-telling-the-south-african-story-131848">recent</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/dance-softly-and-carry-a-big-voice-understanding-joseph-shabalala-131939">death</a> have reminded us of the extraordinary achievements of this most celebrated of South African composers working within a popular endogenous idiom. </p>
<p>But they have left largely untouched questions about what lay behind those achievements: the sources of his creative energies, his beliefs about what he was doing, his wishes about what he wanted to achieve. </p>
<p>I came by the some of that information along several routes. </p>
<p>Joseph and I had a long friendship; we enjoyed a professional association that culminated in his appointment as an honorary professor of music at the University of KwaZulu-Natal; and I had the privilege of sitting down with him over a period of six months for a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3060865?seq=7#metadata_info_tab_contents">series of focused discussions</a> to probe these very questions. In a characteristically generous move, he also gave me access to his hand-written private notebooks, filled with his musical and music-teaching reflections.</p>
<h2>The school of dreams</h2>
<p>One of the core topics we broached was the question of how he learnt his craft as a composer. His answer was startling: for a period of six months in 1964, he was visited in his dreams every night by a choir “from above” who sang to him. </p>
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<p>I’m sleeping, but I’m watching the show. I saw myself sleeping but watching, just like when you are watching TV.</p>
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<p>Shabalala compared this experience to that of going to school. </p>
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<p>I was lucky to be trained by that spiritual group. These people were my teachers. I learnt everything about music from those people.</p>
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<p>But why compose at all? What provided the particular impulses for Shabalala’s songs? He had more than a single answer. He would say things like:</p>
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<p>Sometimes you can hear the music when you just keep quiet. </p>
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<p>But pressed to be more specific, his answers would become less mystical.</p>
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<p>The composition comes from your eyes. You see something. You see something and you want to correct if that thing is wrong, or you want to praise if that thing is right. You feel maybe this thing’s not good, how can I correct this? Or you feel like, how can I tell the people that this thing’s good, we must all do things like this, I wish to see this again? Alright, alright let me make a song about it!</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320087/original/file-20200312-111268-5069hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320087/original/file-20200312-111268-5069hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320087/original/file-20200312-111268-5069hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320087/original/file-20200312-111268-5069hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320087/original/file-20200312-111268-5069hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320087/original/file-20200312-111268-5069hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320087/original/file-20200312-111268-5069hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320087/original/file-20200312-111268-5069hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=379&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">Joseph Shabalala leads Ladysmith Black Mambazo in a performance in Washington in 2007. Photo by.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>At heart, Shabalala was motivated by a belief of disarming simplicity – that, as he once put it to me,</p>
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<p>Music is for peace. When you sing, you feel like you want people to come together and love each other and share ideas.</p>
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<p>He attributed by far the largest and most important part of the process of composing music to what occurred while he was asleep. </p>
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<p>When I’m sleeping my spirit does the work. Sometimes at night when I’m sleeping, I will discover my wife shaking me – says, ‘Hey what’s going on? Are you singing now?’ So that’s why I say: When my flesh is sleeping, it’s daytime in my spirit.</p>
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<p>He described this sleep-time work as “a beautiful teaching at night”. He might have laboured over a song during the day, but</p>
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<p>at night when you relax, you feel like there’s somebody who is next to you, talking to you, correcting you. To me, it’s just like a school at night. In fact, I’m just like somebody who has an advisor all the time when I think about music.</p>
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<h2>A quest to be original</h2>
<p>Linked to Shabalala’s wish to contribute to the betterment of society, was the unrelenting demand he made of himself to try always to do something new as a composer. He lived with the injunction to be original, to surpass himself, to do what had never been achieved before within the isicathamiya idiom. </p>
<p>This could become a burden – and nowhere more so than in the commercial recording studio, where his ideals clashed with the studio’s primary commitment to produce a profitable commodity. </p>
<p>Shabalala’s impulse to do better often had the effect of making his music more complex: it became more difficult to rehearse, to perform, to record, and its tendencies were often at odds with the formulaic expectations of the record producers. In years gone by, he recalled, he would take his group to the studio to record an album and be finished in five hours. But at the apex of his career this would take a week – or even longer if he was dissatisfied with the results.</p>
<p>Most dramatically, this became manifest in Shabalala’s growing resistance to the three- or four-minute song. Had his ambition been granted, he would have abolished such limitations altogether. Indeed, so “policed” was he by these industry standards that they were worryingly with him from the first rehearsal of a new song. Even at that early stage he would check the length of the piece against the clock, discuss the matter with the group, have them sing through the song without any repetitions. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s song Long Walk to Freedom was released in 2006.</span></figcaption>
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<p>For what he ultimately aspired to was to make an album consisting of a single, unbroken song. Once he went as far as to propose the idea to his producer at Gallo Music Productions.</p>
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<p>I said, can you allow me to make an album, just sing, not stopping? Just sing, just sing. I can give different melodies – but not stop, just sing right through. Just to tell the people a story. </p>
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<p>Of course, this flew in the face of industry commodification, and the request was ridiculed. “He was laughing at me!” Shabalala said. “He was just laughing at me!”</p>
<p>Aesthetic that wish certainly was, but it was also inseparable from Shabalala’s unremitting ambition to find better ways to help bring about a more humane world. That ambition found many expressive modalities in his work and practice. One of my personal favourites is a typically poetic entry in one of his notebooks. In a section entitled <em>Practical Advice to Composers: On the need for authenticity</em>, he writes:</p>
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<p>Look for the sound that has not been heard. Cattle don’t bellow in the same way. How do the calves low? How does a goat bleat? How does a crow crow, and how does it communicate with a hen? There are many birds – they do not sing in the same way.</p>
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<p>Such were the values that Shabalala lived for, and that came to life in his huge output of songs for his multiple <a href="https://www.grammy.com/grammys/artists/ladysmith-black-mambazo">Grammy-award-winning</a> vocal group. He leaves a legacy not just to admire, but also to ponder. It is one from which we have things to learn.</p>
<p><em>This article is based on research originally published in The British Journal of Ethnomusicology. Read the paper over <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3060865?seq=7#metadata_info_tab_contents">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132671/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Ballantine 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 period of intense dreaming in 1964 shaped the entire body of the late Joseph Shabalala’s songs. In these rare in-depth interviews, he spoke of his beliefs and inspirations.Christopher Ballantine, Professor of Music Emeritus, and University Fellow, University of KwaZulu-NatalLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1319392020-02-18T11:22:35Z2020-02-18T11:22:35ZDance softly and carry a big voice: understanding Joseph Shabalala<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315738/original/file-20200217-10985-1x43trs.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">Lars Baron/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Joseph Bekhizizwe Shabalala <a href="https://theconversation.com/of-strong-winds-heavy-hearts-and-joseph-shabalala-telling-the-south-african-story-131848">passed away</a> I stopped in my tracks and just let the sadness pull me down. And then inspiration from his beacon of a life lifted me back up. </p>
<p>Shabalala’s own response to the devastating murder of his wife <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/may/29/guardianobituaries.robindenselow">Nellie</a> in 2002 was the transcendently uplifting album by his ensemble <a href="https://mambazo.com/">Ladysmith Black Mambazo</a> called <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2003/may/02/popandrock.shopping1">Raise Your Spirit Higher</a>. It won a Grammy in 2003. </p>
<p>What is our response to the great artistic and spiritual hole his loss has left in South Africa? The journalistic tributes have poured in from all over, both at home and abroad. This saves me the labour of reviewing the innumerable highlights of Shabalala’s extraordinary shooting star of a life and career. What does remain for us academic tortoises waddling after the journalist hares is to meditate on the quality and character of his unique personhood and achievement, and their meaning for South Africa and indeed the world. </p>
<h2>Directed by dreams</h2>
<p>To begin at the beginning, Shabalala’s parents were not simply tenant farmers in the district of Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal, but more significantly <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/sangoma">Zulu spiritual diviners</a> and herbal doctors. The religious approach of physical and psychological healing as a single unified medical system was inculcated from birth, along with the intense outpouring of singing, drumming, and dancing such treatment requires.</p>
<p>This is important when we consider the role of dreams in Shabalala’s creative autobiography. Dreams are a vital source of inspiration and communication from the netherworld in indigenous southern African religion. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315756/original/file-20200217-10980-1qoupb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315756/original/file-20200217-10980-1qoupb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315756/original/file-20200217-10980-1qoupb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315756/original/file-20200217-10980-1qoupb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315756/original/file-20200217-10980-1qoupb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315756/original/file-20200217-10980-1qoupb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315756/original/file-20200217-10980-1qoupb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315756/original/file-20200217-10980-1qoupb7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&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">Ladysmith Black Mambazo perform at Carnegie Hall in New York.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Their power carries over into African Christianity, which Shabalala took up devoutly after the early success of Ladysmith Black Mambazo in the 1970s. “The Church of Christ the Dreamer” as playwright and author <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/harold-athol-fugard">Athol Fugard</a> called it in his novel Tsotsi. </p>
<p>Shabalala’s dream of a choir of children singing “in perfect harmony” proved formative in his ensemble’s career. For the rest of his life he dreamt of new songs, new arrangements, techniques, and disciplines that the group developed and performed on stage. Directed by dreams, he was a formidable, uncompromising taskmaster in rehearsal. </p>
<p>This submission to the spirit of musical harmony in dreams helps to explain the secret of Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s success. Regardless of their highly localised genre, they were just so good, and the global audience was absolutely enchanted. I recall listening to them at New York’s cavernous Carnegie Hall in 1988. For three uninterrupted hours, using only their voices and synchronous choreography, they kept the audience spellbound at the edge of their seats in awed, worshipful silence.</p>
<h2>A bridge with the West</h2>
<p>The Africanisation of Christianity, audible in the group’s <a href="https://ums.org/2010/01/14/what-is-isicathamiya/">isicathamiya</a> genre, produced a blend of Christian hymnody and isiZulu male polyphonic vocal traditions. This deep synthesis provided a bridge between Zulu and Western music that Shabalala crossed and re-crossed repeatedly by a variety of routes. </p>
<p>This explains in part the naturalness of his ability to collaborate with an astonishing range of American vocalists and composers, from Paul Simon to Stevie Wonder to Dolly Parton. Another part of the explanation was Shabalala’s overwhelming humanism and dedication to social as well as musical harmony, that touched everyone he encountered.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Dolly Parton famously collaborated with Ladysmith Black Mambazo.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Shaped by migration</h2>
<p>A second foundational theme in the life and work of Shabalala was the necessity of labour migration, which he was forced to undertake at a young age following the early death of his father. The hardships of the migrant labour system, which formed the economic foundation of racial capitalism and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>, later became a staple of his lyrical composition and landscape of feeling. </p>
<p>The title song of the group’s album <em>Isitimela</em> (Train) thus laments:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here is the train; it has gone, 0h father it is going to Pietermaritzburg They will weep, they will remain behind, sorrowful over us …
The heavens are trembling.
If you marry a lady, she will remain behind weeping
They will remain behind, sad over us ….</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These hymns of the hardships of migrant labour – like the rock/maskanda of Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu of <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-07-19-00-johnny-clegg-in-retrospect-it-all-began-with-juluka/">Juluka</a> who appeared with them on Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s first overseas tour in 1981 – mounted an implicit political challenge to the white minority government. It transgressed the boundaries of apartheid cultural ideology. </p>
<h2>The face of black South Africa</h2>
<p>Just as importantly, Ladysmith Black Mambazo helped to humanise oppressed black South Africans to a mass audience overseas. The success of Paul Simon’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/apr/19/paul-simon-graceland-acclaim-outrage"><em>Graceland</em></a> album and tours in the mid-1980s led to a successful international touring and recording career for Ladysmith Black Mambazo in their own right. </p>
<p>American audiences who enjoyed the stunning beauty and exotic perfection of Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s intricate vocal harmonies could hardly believe that these were the same sort of people as the unarmed protesters that brutal South African police were shown beating, shooting and teargassing on the evening news. </p>
<p>Suddenly, as their song <em>Homeless</em> from the Graceland album prayerfully intimated, every black life in South Africa’s struggle was a real, human life, one whose loss ought to be prevented. </p>
<p>Of course, in reply to those English-speaking critics who believed they looked in vain for political consciousness in Ladysmith’s songs, Shabalala rightly pointed out that in isiZulu there are subtleties of reference that do not survive translation. And that during the struggle virtually all popular music was held to have a political valence in black communities because politics had become the implicit ground of social discourse. </p>
<p>Finally, Ladysmith’s appropriations of African-American hymnody and gospel are part of a tradition of ‘<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674076068">Black Atlantic</a>’ political cross-fertilisation and aspiration. This receives perhaps its most notable expression in <a href="https://youtu.be/288r0Mo1bFw">Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika</a>, the anthem of the African National Congress that has become the first verse of the <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-sa/national-symbols/national-anthem">national anthem</a> of South Africa.</p>
<h2>A musical Mandela</h2>
<p>Finally, we should pause to consider Shabalala as a kind of musical Nelson Mandela, at once a great talent and a great soul, who humanised South Africans, their troubles and their aspirations, for the world. </p>
<p>Yet he was above all a perfectionist, setting a standard by which our performing artists will continue to be judged by the world audience for a very long time. <em>Phumula ngokuthula, lala ngoxolo mfowethu Bekhizizwe</em> (Rest in peace Bhekizizwe). Because of you, the rest of us have work to do.</p>
<p><em>Some passages are adapted from David B. Coplan’s book <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo5867457.html">In Township Tonight!</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131939/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>Joseph Shabalala would grow world famous for his music. But it is shaped by the spiritual aspects of his life as much as it is by the hardships of black life - and by his dreams.David Coplan, Professor Emeritus, Social Anthropology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1318482020-02-14T12:18:25Z2020-02-14T12:18:25ZOf strong winds, heavy hearts and Joseph Shabalala telling the South African story<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315480/original/file-20200214-10991-tv14v9.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">Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Joseph Shabalala was the affable leader of <a href="https://mambazo.com/">Ladysmith Black Mambazo</a>, a men’s group that sang <a href="https://ums.org/2010/01/14/what-is-isicathamiya/">isicathamiya</a>, a traditional Zulu genre of South African <a href="https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-a-capella-music.html">a cappella</a>. </p>
<p>Even with heavy hearts at <a href="https://mg.co.za/friday/2020-02-12-how-joseph-shabalala-mambazo-chopped-the-competition-down/">his passing</a>, a lot of South Africans know they are much richer for his time in the world. For the group he formed, for making music true to himself and his group while enduring the harsh conditions of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a>, for the hits they made, for the narratives they wove about the lives of South Africans and for surpassing the social and economic limitations set out by apartheid public policy and its systems of oppression. </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter whether they knew him personally or not. With Ladysmith Black Mambazo, he told their story.</p>
<p>The group had a number of hits and was showered with <a href="https://www.grammy.com/grammys/artists/ladysmith-black-mambazo">endless</a> <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/ladysmith-black-mambazo">accolades</a> for its oeuvre over its 60-year career. </p>
<p>But the impact of one song in particular stands out for me because of its personal layers of meaning as a black South African of a particular generation, as an occasional music performer and music researcher. </p>
<p><em>Homeless</em> was one of the group’s first slew of hits on both South African shores and abroad. It was a song on Paul Simon’s collaborative, politically controversial but successful 1986 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/apr/19/paul-simon-graceland-acclaim-outrage"><em>Graceland</em> album</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JFQ1TSzdpRA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Ladysmith Black Mambazo/YouTube.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the surface, <em>Homeless</em> <a href="https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/5225632/Ladysmith+Black+Mambazo/Homeless">is a song</a> that laments the strife that comes with a broken home, being homeless and sleeping rough on cliffs while looking onto a lake with the moon shining on it. Fundamentally, however, it is a song about the excesses of apartheid and the flourishing of Ladysmith Black Mambazo.</p>
<h2>Homeless</h2>
<p>I heard <em>Homeless</em> countless times. On the radio in the house where I lived, in taxis and just about anywhere outside on the streets of Northcrest, <a href="https://www.places.co.za/html/mthatha.html">Mthatha</a>, a small town in the eastern part of South Africa. I was a six-year-old, far away from my mother, separated from her by almost 1,000 kilometers, constantly longing for her and the feeling of home she simply was. I only saw her a handful of times a year because she worked in Johannesburg and each time I heard the song I too felt homeless. </p>
<p>This was at the height of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/people-armed-1984-1990">political unrest</a> in the late 1980s. The government had imposed a <a href="http://www.saha.org.za/ecc25/ecc_under_a_state_of_emergency.htm">state of emergency</a>. But none of that mattered to me. I couldn’t be with my mother.</p>
<p>Even with my weak command of the English language at the time, I understood the idea of homelessness and so the song easily spoke to me. Its Zulu phrases highlighting “<em>inhliziyo yam</em>” (my heart) also spoke to my experience of a heavy heart and separation in potent ways, ways my little mind couldn’t communicate or fully process. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315481/original/file-20200214-11011-6bs2kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315481/original/file-20200214-11011-6bs2kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315481/original/file-20200214-11011-6bs2kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315481/original/file-20200214-11011-6bs2kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315481/original/file-20200214-11011-6bs2kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315481/original/file-20200214-11011-6bs2kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315481/original/file-20200214-11011-6bs2kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315481/original/file-20200214-11011-6bs2kz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Shabalala beams during a Washington performance with Paul Simon in 2007.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Scott Suchman/WireImage</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The song expressed a depth of emotion and meaning about unique political strong winds as the group belts out “strong wind destroy our homes”. The kinds of strong winds that shatter some of what makes us whole and lead us to not realise our potential. The kinds of strong winds that have charted the fragile social and economic path South Africa is on today, a path shaped by <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-11-19-why-sa-is-the-worlds-most-unequal-society/">generational exclusion</a> from development, education and wealth.</p>
<h2>About so much more</h2>
<p>Later in my life, in a democratic South Africa, I took courses in ethnomusicology and had the opportunity to analyse and contextualise the music of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Listening to <em>Homeless</em> again took me right back to that state of childhood longing. </p>
<p>But with more knowledge about the brutal political history during which genres like isicathamiya were birthed, the hostile conditions in which Ladysmith Black Mambazo operated at night and on weekends over years, the dire social and economic conditions of black people, I realised that these were the realities of the majority of South Africans. </p>
<p>I realised that this song did not just tell my story or was about an experience unique to me. It was about our collective history. It was about the history of black South Africa and those from surrounding countries trapped by a migrancy-mining complex which would institutionalise family separation and consciously ignore its bleak aftermath.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315482/original/file-20200214-10976-hiptsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315482/original/file-20200214-10976-hiptsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315482/original/file-20200214-10976-hiptsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315482/original/file-20200214-10976-hiptsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315482/original/file-20200214-10976-hiptsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315482/original/file-20200214-10976-hiptsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315482/original/file-20200214-10976-hiptsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315482/original/file-20200214-10976-hiptsu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Shabalala takes a coffee break during rehearsals at the Sydney Hordern Pavilion in 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Philip Wayne Lock/Fairfax Media/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even though credited to both Joseph Shabalala and Paul Simon, <em>Homeless</em>, like other Ladysmith Black Mambazo songs before and after the <em>Graceland</em> album, involved the harsh reality of migrant labour, the cycle of poverty it created, family separation, politically-sown dysfunction, heavy hearts, broken dreams, cultural heritage, disempowerment, dispossession, seeds of generational and social decay, resignation to this fate, adapting to it to find simple pleasures, and life in contemporary South Africa. </p>
<p>As part of this Ladysmith Black Mambazo tradition of social commentary, <em>Homeless</em> is a tale of so much more. For instance, the song is also about winning over the hearts and minds of people in foreign lands for the sake of validation and legitimacy. </p>
<p>On one level in the song, Ladysmith Black Mambazo seems to boast, with incredulity, about what it has achieved: “<em>Yith’omanqoba, esanqoba lonk’ilizwe… Esanqoba phakathi eNgilan</em>”. This phrase means, “We’re the winners, we won all over the world, we won right inside England.”</p>
<p>Winning hearts in England also makes the case that Ladysmith Black Mambazo “has arrived”. This ‘arrival’ relates to the success of managing to escape apartheid’s government-prescribed limitations around the social and economic conditions for them as black people. Ladysmith Black Mambazo as such exceeded the black man’s relegation to the status of labourer. Performing abroad removed them from industrial labour. Having a performance career in countries like England was at that time in history rare for black people. </p>
<p>In spite of that, from that point on, Ladysmith Black Mambazo existed on an international plane. Through this lens, England validated them as legitimate music performers outside of competing only at isicathamiya competitions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315484/original/file-20200214-11023-ngm1z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315484/original/file-20200214-11023-ngm1z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315484/original/file-20200214-11023-ngm1z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315484/original/file-20200214-11023-ngm1z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315484/original/file-20200214-11023-ngm1z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315484/original/file-20200214-11023-ngm1z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315484/original/file-20200214-11023-ngm1z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315484/original/file-20200214-11023-ngm1z7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Shabalala sang of the pain of a nation – and then took his traditional isicathamiya sounds to the rest of the world.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Conquerors</h2>
<p>With his widely reported genial nature, Shabalala led his group to conquer hearts and minds in many countries with their performances. They nurtured networks abroad to their own benefit and managed to sustain a career outside South Africa. </p>
<p>Participating in <em>Graceland</em> had a large hand in dealing this opportunity. It introduced Ladysmith Black Mambazo to systems, gatekeepers, powerbrokers and performance circuits they would not have had while performing only in their home country. Shabalala thus managed to pull off what many South African contemporary music artists are struggling with in the absence of a convincing music circuit, sufficient government and corporate sector programmes to promote South African music abroad and penetrate global markets, as well as a culture of consuming South African products to advance the South African story. </p>
<p>He told the South African story at home, and away from home.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131848/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>The passing of music giant Joseph Shabalala rests heavy on South African hearts - he told the story of black migrants within the apartheid system in a way no-one else did - and achieved global fame.Akhona Ndzuta, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.