Furious Music

Various Artists – Songlines: Top of the World 39

You can’t really have a sequence of South African music without a track from Ladysmith Black Mambazo, can you? I think not and so this week I’m posting Shosholoza, one of south Africa’s most recorded songs. Joe Mogotsi of the Manhattan Brothers claimed that his group was the very first to record the song. Other artists to have recorded Shosholoza include Peter Gabriel, PJ Powers, Black Umfolosi, the Soweto Gospel Choir and the Drakensberg Boys Choir.

Shosholoza was included in Sing Africa! – a education project by Mbawula (a group of African and Western jazz musicians specialising in South African music), the London Boroughs of Bexley, Greenwich, Lewisham, and Southwark, Trinity College of Music, and Blackheath Concert Halls. On their website, there is an excellent page about the song which explains that:

“The song is an old miner’s song, originally sung by groups of men from the Ndebele tribe who travelled by steam train from their homes in Zimbabwe to work in South Africa’s diamond and gold mines. The Ndebele people live in the northern regions of South Africa and across the northern border into Zimbabwe. The Ndebele language is closely related to Zulu. As well as urging workers to “go forward” the ’sho’ sounds in the word Shosholoza are onomatopoeic, reminiscent of the sound of the train described in the song. Nobody knows who wrote the song, or exactly when it was written, but we do know that South Africa’s mining industry and the development of steam railways in the mining areas both began in the late 1800s.”

This Ladysmith Black Mambazo version of Shosholoza is taken from the cover album of Songlines magazine issue 39. It was included in the picks of the Alexander McCall Smith and was taken from the album Long Road to Freedom where LBM are joined by artists such as Taj Mahal, Emmylou Harris and Melissa Etheridge! On the original album, the track is listed as being by Ladysmith Black Mambazo & Lucky Dube with Bhekumuzi Luthuli, Hugh Masekela, Vusi Mahlasela, Nokukhanya, Phuzekhemisi and Thandiswa Mazwai.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo – Shosholoza

Various Artists – The Rough Guide to the Music of South Africa

This week has conspired against me and instead of writing one post and preparing another to be super organised before my holiday, I’m scribbling this post and don’t have much hope for a great literary effort for next week’s one. This week at least the music is going to have to do the talking.

I’m posting Mbube by Solomon Linda’s Original Evening Birds. Play it and you will instantly recognise it as Wimoweh, popularised in the USA by the Weavers and The Kingston Trio and in the UK by The Karl Denver Trio. It was more recently featured in the Walt Disney film The Lion King.

The story of the song and the struggle to ensure that Solomon Linda, the writer of the original song, was credited and all royalties due were paid to his heirs makes fascinating reading.

Solomon Linda’s Original Evening Birds – Mbube

Various Artists – Voices

Your 2010 FIFA World Cup starts here! The plan is, for the next 6 weeks, to celebrate South Africa’s hosting of the World Cup, I shall be posting South African music. Then, after the final, I shall post a track from the winning country.

Don’t worry, it’s all organised. I’ve a fair amount of South African music in my collection and then all I have to do at the end of the tournament is choose the most appropriate English track to post to commemorate our great victory!

I shall start this long journey with Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika, the song that was considered to be the unofficial national anthem of South Africa during the apartheid regime. This song, God Bless Africa in Xhosa, was originally composed as a hymn by a Methodist mission school in Johannesburg teacher, Enoch Sontonga in 1897. The words of the first stanza were originally written in Xhosa as a hymn and in 1927 seven additional Xhosa stanzas were added by the poet Samuel Mqhayi.

In 1994 after the fall of apartheid, Nelson Mandela declared that both “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika” and the previous national anthem, Die Stem van Suid-Afrika (The Voice of South Africa) would be joint national anthems. In 1996, a shortened, combined version of the two anthems was released as the new South African National Anthem under the constitution of South Africa.

I am posting Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika as sung by the cast of the play Poppie Nongena from the Hannibal Records sampler Voices. The play features traditional South African music throughout and ends with Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika being sung in the final scene.

Poppie Nongena started life as an Afrikaans novel Die Swerfjare van Poppie Nongena (The Long Journey of Poppie Nongena) written by Elsa Joubert. The novel and resulting play won awards around the world and tells the story of one woman’s struggle against apartheid.

Poppie Nongena Cast – Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika