Routledge

Chapter Notes

Chapter 1 South African Music: The Lion Sleeps Tonight

Mbube

  • Mbube was written by Solomon Linda and was recorded in 1939 by the Solomon Linda Evening Birds for Gallo Records
  • The recording was sent to America where it found its way to Alan Lomax who sent it to Pete Seeger of The Weavers
  • The Weavers recorded the song in 1952 and it became a hit in America (Seeger misheard ‘Mbube’ as ‘Wimoweh’)
  • Songwriter George Weiss wrote new words for the song which became a hit by The Tokens in 1961 as The Lion Sleeps Tonight
  • Mbube/Wimoweh/The Lion Sleeps Tonight underwent hundreds of copies, arrangements, and covers in the following decades, although Linda received hardly any royalties
  • Only in 2006, about four decades after Linda's death, did Linda's family receive royalties after a major court case.

Analysis of Mbube causes us to question what is meant by ‘African’ music

  • ‘African’ elements in Linda's Mbube: call and response where phrases overlap, cyclic structure, melodic phrases are pentatonic, no obvious points of closure (that is, no obvious cadential moments)
  • Several aspects of Mbube may be thought of as ‘African’ even though these aspects derive from late 19th century and early 20th century European and American music styles. For example: four-part harmony, and the marabi harmonic cycle I-IV-I6/4-V7-I
  • Use of drums is not emphasized in southern African music
  • There is a strong emphasis on voice in southern African music.

Historicizing conceptions of ‘Africanness’

  • Four levels of analysis: the national (South Africa), the regional (southern Africa); the continental (Africa as a whole), and the global
  • Early twentieth century European conception of ‘African’: black Africans were defined against white European
  • Mid-20th century European conception of ‘African’: defined in terms of nations and nations-within-nations in the continent of Africa
  • Post-apartheid conception of ‘African’ is more inclusive, including not only ‘blacks’ but also other people born on the continent such as whites and Asians
  • Post-apartheid South Africa has attempted to re-establishing political, economic, and cultural ties to other African nations

Important cultural brokers and researchers of southern African music: Hugh Tracy, Andrew Tracy, Gei Zantzinger (ethnographic filmmaker), John Blacking, David Rycroft, Yvonne Huskisson.