Traditional South African Music (and how it has changed and been adapted)

1. Traditional South African Music(and how it has changed and been adapted) By: Sarah-Bracha Cohen

2. 1000CE: • Imported crops and trade enabled Bantu people of • Central and West Africa to gain population and migrateto occupy most of Central and South Africa – displacing Pygmy and Bushmen peoples. • The Zulu people adopted the guitar following its introduction by the Portuguese in the 16th century, (and was locally and cheaply made by the 1930s). Zulu music incorporates rhythm, melody and harmony, for that’s how they could communicate more easily, due to their hard language. The Zulu people live mainly in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. The Zulu Kingdom played a major role in constantly effecting the changes in music throughout southern Africa’s history. • 1600s: • In the Dutch colonial era, from the 17th century on, indigenous tribes people and slaves imported from the east adapted Western musical instruments and ideas. • 1652: • Dutch settle in Capetown, South Africa. • San (Bushmen) and Khoikhoin (Hottentot) Southern Africa • The Khoi-Khoi, had lived in southern Africa since the 5th century AD. At the time of the arrival of white settlers in 1652 developed the ramkie, a guitar with three or four strings, based on that of Malabar slaves. They used it to blend Khoi and Western folk songs. • Then there was the mamokhorong. It was a single-string violin that was used by the Khoi in their own music making and in the dances of the colonial centre, Cape Town, which rapidly became a melting pot of cultural influences from all over the world. • The governor of the Cape had his own slave orchestra in the 1670s.

3. 1800s • In a style similar to that of British marching military bands, coloured (mixed race) bands of musicians began parading through the streets of Cape Town in the early 1820s, This tradition has continued to the present day with the great carnival held in Cape Town every New Year. • The penetration of missionaries into the interior over the succeeding centuries also had a profound influence on South African musical styles. In the late 1800s, early African composers began composing hymns that drew on traditional Xhosa harmonic patterns--features drums, rattles, whistles, flutes, mouth harps, and stringed-instruments and especially group singing accompanied by hand clapping. • The development of a black urban proletariat and the movement of many black workers to the mines meant that differing regional traditional folk music met and began to flow into one another. Western instrumentation was used to adapt rural songs, which in turn started to influence the development of new hybrid styles of music-making (as well as dances) in the developing urban centres. • In the mid-1800s, travelling minstrel shows began to visit South Africa. These minstrels were at first white performers in "black-face", but by the 1860s black American minstrel troupes had begun to tour the country. They sang spirituals of the American South, and influenced many South African groups to form themselves into similar choirs; soon regular meetings and competitions between such choirs were popular, forming an entire subculture that continues to this day. One of the most famous minstrels to impact South African music was the Virginia Jubilee Singers. • In the late-1800s, the Marabi music style formed in the slum yards that resulted from the increasing urbanization of black South Africans into mining centres such as the Witwatersrand. The sound of marabi was intended to draw people into the shebeens (bars selling homemade liquor or skokiaan) and then to get them dancing. Marabi was played on pianos with accompaniment from pebble-filled cans. Over the succeeding decades, the marabi-swing style developed into early mbaqanga, the most distinctive form of South African jazz.

4. Early—Mid-1900s • Early 1900s: • South African popular music takes off, due to the first commercial recordings (1912) and broadcast radio for black listeners (1930s). • Marabi's melodies found their way into the sounds of the bigger dance bands, modelled on American swing groups. Marabi added to their distinctively South African style. Such bands, which produced the first generation of professional black musicians in South Africa, achieved considerable popularity; among both blacks and whites. • Spread of Zulu, a cappella singing from the Natal area to much of South Africa. The tradition of minstrelsy, joined with other forms, contributed to the development of isicathamiya (a form of the Zulu a cappella music). This music form had its first major hit in 1939 with the song "Mbube", an adaptation of a traditional Zulu melody which has been reused numerous times since, and is commonly known as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". • Mid 1900s: • South African music came into International prominence with the formation of Kwela music, which was greatly influenced by Marabi sounds. The primary instrument of kwela, in the beginning, was the pennywhistle, a cheap and simple instrument that was taken up by street performers in the shantytowns. • The older strains of marabi and kwela saw the birth of mbaqanga, the mode of African-inflected jazz. • Later in the 1950s a new black urban music culture started to emerge in Sophiatown. Marabi met with traditional dance styles such as the Zulu indlamu and American big band swing. The indlamu tendency resulted in the "African stomp" style, giving a notably African rhythmic impulse to the music. • From the 1960s onward, more and more white rockers and pop groups appeared to appeal to white audiences in a segregated South Africa. • The South African government launched a development program for Bantu Radio in order to foster separate development and encourage independence for the Bantustans—people in territory set aside for black inhabitants of South Africa and South-Western Africa (now Namibia), as part of the policy of apartheid. Though the government had expected Bantu Radio to play folk music, African music had developed into numerous pop genres, and the nascent recording studios used radio to push their pop stars. The new focus on radio led to a government crackdown on lyrics, censoring songs which were considered a "public hazard".

5. Late 1900s—modern times • Late 1900s: • African countries gained independence from colonial powers. New governments sponsored traditional arts and fostered African nationalism. • Ladysmith Black Mambazo became perhaps the biggest stars in South Africa's history, reforming the sound of Zulu a cappella. • American disco was imported to South Africa, and disco beats were added to soul music. • South African children rebelled en masse against apartheid and governmental authority, and a vibrant, youthful counterculture was created, with music as an integral part of its focus. Few South African bands gained a lasting success during this period, however, with the exception of the Movers, who used marabi elements in their soul.Rabbitt disbanded. • The 1980s saw the appearance of Afro-jazz bands, marrying the sounds of American fusion and ancient African patterns, to considerable commercial success. A genre of music referred to as‘bubblegum' emerged from the townships. • By the mid-1980s a white alternative rock culturehad developed, and showed considerable diversity. At the same time, a crossover was beginning to happen between black and white musicians. • Johnny Clegg, a sociologist who learnt so much about Zulu music and dance that he formed his own group, Juluka. Juluka's ability to mix traditional Zulu music with white pop and folk was in itself a challenge to the racial boundaries the apartheid regime attempted to erect between blacks and whites. With often a more pop-driven style, other bands followed the crossover trail blazed by Clegg (hailed overseas as "the white Zulu"), whose later band, Savuka, continued to reproduce his earlier success. • In 1980, reggae begins to take hold across Africa. • Vusi Ximba's Siyakudamisa (1992) was perhaps the most memorable Zulu-traditional album of the later 20th century, and drew controversy for racy, comedic lyrics. • In 1994, South African media was liberalized and new musical styles arose. • 2000s: • Free of the baggage of apartheid, Afrikaans music has grown in popularity. • A major addition to this style of music is Fokofpolisiekar, a Cape Town-based punk rock band. Their positive move away from the stigma attached to Afrikaans culture has attracted a lot of publicity in South Africa and has given them a considerable amount of fame.

6. Facts: Traditional Music • Polyrhythm: rhythms that occur simultaneously in two different meters, or with different starting points. • Call-and-Response: exchange between a soloist and a • group. • Ostinato: a short pattern that repeats over and over. • Predominance of Percussion • Duality of Sound (Background Shimmer) • Connection between music & langauge • Expectation of Participation in Arts • Connection between Art Forms: music, dance, poetry, song.

7. "COW HORN MBILA - (XYLOPHONE)" “COW MBILA”by Albert Munyai

8. "TALL MAN MBILA"by Albert Munyai "NGOMA LUNGUNDU"by Noria Mabasa “Voice of the Ancestors” is a gigantic Murumba carved from an ancestor tree (a very old tree). The Murumba is a baritone drum with a conical resonator. With the musical and sculptural work, we find Albert Munyai’s first mbila (xylophone). The walking man wears traditional beads around his neck, stating his Venda origins. His hand is placed on his stomach to send the energy that dwells there, through to his head. It is with the placement of the drum (on top of the figures head) that this energy is transformed into rhythm. The keys of the mbila are placed along the vertebrae of the spinal column — the man carries and produces music from within his backbone. "Mandamaswa a Tikwa Ngamalala - PAINTED DRUM"by Albert Munyai Zulu Skin Drums

9. Calabash Shakers Shakers - Large Double Single Calabash Shaker Medium Single Shaker Shakers - Small Double

10. Other Instruments MBEKWENI MARIMBA BAND Ramkie-- guitar-like instrument Kalimbas

11. The Soweto Gospel Choir won their second consecutive Grammy Award in the category best traditional world music for their album 'African Spirit' in February 2008 Ladysmith Black Mambazo Zulu Boys Dancing

12. music and videos • http://batayin.org/projects/musicfrombatayin.htm • http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1672483 • http://video.google.com/videosearch?client=safari&rls=en&q=traditional%20south%20african%20music&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=active&um=1&sa=N&tab=wv#

13. Sources: • http://www.smccd.edu/accounts/lapuzd/Lectures/Africa%20Notes.pdf • http://www.aism.co.za/aismnew/appcontext/subcat.asp?catid=CMus0001&catname=Musical%20Instr • http://www.mukondeni.com/html/Musical%20Instruments.htm • http://www.sahistory.org.za/pages/chronology/special-chrono/society/mucic.htm • www.Google.com • www.southafrica.info • www.wikipedia.org