Let’s meet the the Father of African Jazz — Hugh Masekela.
South African composer, singer, activist, trumpeter, cornetist and, last but certainly not least, FLUGELHORNIST, Hugh Masekela has transcended national and musical boundaries since the 1960’s, seamlessly fusing strong the traditional sounds of South Africa with international jazz. Join him on the “Coal Train” in this video and you’ll be right there with him in the groove. (Watch all the way through and you’ll get it.)
“He Motsoala” is our favorite African travel song. Pete Seeger and the Song Swappers reworked a traditional South African song into “He Motsoala” for their Bantu Choral Folk Songs recording. Seeger’s version of “He Motsoala” — and ours — is about a mother who travels to the South African city of Pretoria to buy a license for the wedding of her daughter.
Let’s start our enjoyment of South African music in the proper place — with the Mahotella Queens. The music of South Africa transcends. Born of struggle but rising above protest, rooted in the very specific history of a nation divided yet eagerly universal, inherently optimistic despite it all. We could do worse than to start with the Mahotella Queens, whose 1960’s “mbaqanga” music, with jangling guitars and crisp choral harmonies, rose from the townships and inspired revolution and dance. Meet them, and their hit “Umculo Kawupheli,” in this video.
This week, in our online class for kids, we near the end of this season’s journey by celebrating the survival of South Africa, a country with an educated and highly motivated population and every intent of succeeding in the face of great challenges, moving beyond its troubled past. And how much do we love South African music…? So much!
In class this week we sing “Thinantsha,” an anti-Apartheid anthem. I sing the song alone in this video, but the version we recorded for All Around This World: Africa is multi-part Zulu harmony reminiscent of a church choir. I first heard “Thinantsha” — “We are the Youth!” on the Smithsonian Folkways CD “This Land is Mine: South African Freedom Songs” as a 1965 performance by South African exiles living in Tanzania, marking their defiance of the Afrikaner government and their determination to succeed in their struggle for equality. The anti-Apartheid forces certainly proved their persistence; Apartheid did not end until the early 1990s.
Many South African church choirs, like the “UniZulu” choir in this video, sing exuberant harmonies. The style of singing blends buoyantly with harmonies that are also at the heart of non-religious South African musical genres, like “Isicathamiya,” which developed in the early 20th century in the gold and diamond mines as a way for miners to communicate with each other through rhythmic stomps, claps and codes.
South African diamond and gold miners sang to keep rhythm with their tedious work, to communicate through stomps and clapping code and ease their struggles through terrible times. In this video we hear “Shosoloza,” a South African/Zimbabwean mine work song. The word “Shosoloza” means “hope” in the Zimbabwean language of Ndebele. (More about Shosoloza.)
The most internationally-known, and perhaps the most complicated, South African song is “Mbube.” What a story….
We end our online class South Africa week — far too soon — with a musical theft of epic proportion. The most famous South African song in the Western Hemisphere must be “Wimoweh,” a traditional South African tune brought to America by folk legend Pete Seeger in the ’50s, popularized in 1961 by a vocal group called the Tokens, Disnified (and generating immense profit) in the 1994 film “The Lion King” …except “Wimoweh” is not a traditional tune–it’s a “Mbube (The Lion),” a song composed by South African musician Solomon Linda Linda died in poverty in 1962. Only after the Disney version generated an estimated $15 million in revenue did Linda’s heirs successfully sue for compensation. Read an account of this twisted tale here.
By the way, lions don’t typically live in the jungle–they live in the savannah, and, while lions do sleep up to 20 hours a day and therefore could technically be “sleeping tonight,” lions are (primarily) nocturnal. Jeez!
The 2002 documentary Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony shows us that South Africa’s anti-Apartheid movement was a musical revolution.
Songs of lament, songs of struggle, songs of rage and songs of hope…South African music wasn’t just a byproduct of anti-Apartheid activism. Instead, songs generated activism, unified mass action and propelled the the people of South Africa to victory.
