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