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.