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Ladysmith rose from the farm to superstardom
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Ottawa Citizen, Ladysmith rose from the farm to superstardom >>
At the time, it was a real imbroglio. Ignoring UN and African National Congress anti-apartheid boycotts, Paul Simon zipped off to South Africa in the mid-1980s and induced Zulu harmony champs Ladysmith Black Mambazo to sing backup on his album Graceland.
The Grammy-winning album, controversy notwithstanding, went on to become one of Simon's most beloved recordings. And it introduced Ladysmith Black Mambazo to a western audience whose knowledge of African music, until then, was largely limited to the Token's 1961 hit The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
Ladysmith, frequently cited as the spark of the world beat explosion, was South Africa's best-selling group long before Rhymin' Simon happened along. That's hardly surprising, considering their flair for sweet-tempered a cappella music with an impossibly precise blend of bass, alto and tenor harmonies.
Since Graceland, Ladysmith has toured relentlessly (their show tonight at Christ Church Cathedral sold out weeks ago), released 25-plus albums, including this year's Raise Your Spirit Higher -- Wenyukela, captured a Grammy, and recorded with everyone from Stevie Wonder to Dolly Parton.
Life wasn't always so glamorous. The group, now 10 strong, was formed in 1964 when Joseph Shabalala pooled the talents of family and friends to sing traditional Zulu music. Like Shabalala, who was born outside Durban, most of the singers were farm boys facing hardscrabble futures tilling the soil or slaving in the diamond mines.
"Life was hard in those times," recalls Albert Mazibuko, Shabalala's cousin and an original member. "We didn't see any difference in working in the farm or the mines. Our fathers worked six months on the farm and six months in the mines. Then they could bring back something that would make our lives easier."
Indeed, Isicathamiya (Is-Cot-A-Me-Ya), the music of Ladysmith, was born in those mines. Far from home and family, paid a pittance for their six-day work weeks, the miners sought respite by singing far into Sunday morning, conscious always of camp security goons.
Returning home, the miners turned their singing into fierce, well-attended competitions with the winners toting off a goat. When Joseph Shabalala, an ambitious guy with a gentle demeanour, got hold of that music, competition became a calling.
Applying textured harmonies apparently revealed to him in a dream, Shabalala led his ensemble to so many sing-off victories that they were banned from competing. "Mambazo," in fact, means axe, symbolizing the group's ability to chop down the competition, while black was the colour of the strongest oxen on the farm and Ladysmith was the hometown of the Shabalala family.
South Africa's cultural elite was cool to the burgeoning popularity of traditional working class music, recalls Mazibuko. "This kind of music was looked down on. People didn't want to talk about it. So we said, 'OK, because Joseph has a dream, let's sit down and we're going to listen to him and we're going to make it important.' "
Which is exactly what they did. Ladysmith -- having accompanied then South African president F.W. de Klerk to the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Norway in 1993, performed at president Mandela's inauguration the next year and sung for the Queen and the Pope -- no longer confronts the sniffs of their betters.
They do, however, still wage the heritage battle. "The radio and TV, they're promoting more the music from outside South Africa," says Mazibuko. "It's very difficult for South African children to be themselves. But our music encourages them very much, like in the schools, to go back to their roots."
The ensemble has had its Christian faith tested in recent years. In 1991, member Headman Shabalala, Joseph's brother, was shot by a white security guard near Durban. Seven years later, West Nkosi, the group's longtime producer, died in a car wreck. In 2002, Nellie Shabalala, Joseph's wife of 30 years, was murdered for no apparent reason in a church parking lot.
Asked how he reconciles these horrors with a loving God, Albert Mazibuko replies, "Bad things happen because of what happened when creation was created. There was someone then who wanted to destroy everything. When someone is taking a gun, God is not responsible for that."
01/23/04
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