It has been said that it wasn’t Mandela but music that truly saved South Africa.  On many levels , this is true.  Long before Mandela was a political prisoner, it was music – melancholy iscathamiya mining songs, lilting township jive or soulful kwela pennywhistle tunes – that helped sustain South African through decades of brutal colonial rule.  These folk and pop songs expressed the anguish, pain and fury that they were restricted from openly demonstrating.  It was also music, in the form of subtly arranges choral hymns or powerful anthems, that helped inspire them to fight for liberation.  Ten years after the dismantling of apartheid, music still plays a vital role in the development of a new democracy.  As the country struggles towards equality, South African music reflects the pain and joy of this process. 

In their first release since 1999, the hopeful Raise Your Spirit Higher - Wenyukela (Heads Up), Ladysmith Black Mambazo explores the faith and strength required to overcome hardship.  On the other hand, last year’s groundbreaking Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony (ATO) documents the struggle and suffering that injected the music with such power.  Both CDs represent the complexity of South African politics and how good and evil or joy and pain can exist side by side.

Raise Your Spirit Higher reveals a mellower, more understated mood from the 10-member group.  The same velvety, a-cappella four-part harmonies that are the hallmark of Zulu choral music are still there, but the shimmering energy that echoed through 1999’s Live At Royal Albert Hall and most of the 30 offerings that preceded that, is gone.  In its place is a reserved feeling with hints of detachment.  From the delicate opening title track on, the stage is set for a collection of beautiful tunes that lull you into a state of comfort and contentment.  This is the point of most religious music, which is mostly what the group sings.  However, Mambazo gained fame for much more than that.  They have the ability to leap over any cultural language of religious boundry and offer up contagious hope for a better world.  The group displays an almost tangible force that supplies their textured songs with underlying radiant power.

That’s not to say that the CD doesn’t exhibit the same vocal excellence for which Mambazo is famous, because it does.  But like South Africa itself, there has been a subtly shift in motivation for the group.  With apartheid dismantled, there is no concrete symbol or condition to overthrow.  The legalcies of apartheid – poverty, joblessness, crime and limited access to quality education remain, but now they must be addressed from within.  This requires a different kind of strength than fighting against an enemy, a quieter focus.   Likewise, it seems as if founder Joseph Shabalala and the rest of Mambazo have shifted to a more serene kind of faith that’s evidenced in their singing.  From gentle “Lord is the Light and Truth,” to the transcendent “Selingelethu Sonke,” their voices exhibit a sense of acceptance of what life has brought them that wasn’t quite there before.

Shabalala chose the title Raise Your Spirit Higher because over the last decade, there’s what he opted to do rather than sink into revenge and hatred.  In 2001, Headman, his brother and group co-founder, was shot and killed by an off-duty South African policeman.  Shabalala has said that he almost lost his spiritual path at that point.  But he clung to his faith and added his three sons to Mambazo’s lineup.  In 2002, his wife of 30 years was shot and killed by a masked gunman in a church parking lot.  After decades of the bloodsheds and oppression of aparthied, Shabalala faced dealing with still more pain.  Again, he chose the higher road and used his music to express the anguish of his experiences.  The strains of his sadness can be heard below the surface of Raise Your Spirit Higher.  It’s a story and a sound that illustrates one side of South Africa.

The documentary film Amandla!  Which was released last year and won two Sundance awards, used South African liberation songs from the ‘50s through the mid ‘90s as central characters.  It was the music that played a major role, moving the people through their struggle.  Fittingly, the soundtrack boasts no one particular style and represents no definitive era.  Rather, it is all South African music seething with spirit and aimed at one singular purpose: liberation.  Ironically, though, they appear in film, Mambazo are not featured on the soundtrack.  Their mbube style is well represented by several choirs and groups; their Christian-based tunes hold no place in a fight for African independence.  Though a lot of the CD’s songs were adapted from church hymns and spirituals, it is the spirit and not the ideology that remains.

The uninitiated could be easily misled by the music of Amandla!.  Without knowledge that these are protest songs, it would be easy to sway to the sweet, jazzy vocals of “Meadowlands,” rock to the soaring, “Lizobuya,” or bop to the Latin-flavored “Beware Verwoerd.”  That is, if you didn’t know that “Meadowlands” was a ghetto to which Johannesburg’s Black residents were bitterly removed, that “Lizbuya” is a lament for stolen African land, and “Beware Vernwoerd” is a threat to the architect of apartheid.

The power of this music is that it does inspire many things: dancing, singing, anger, and joy.  Not all document pain; some, like the soulful “Kuzobenjani Na?’” are actually love songs.  And so it is with the many layers of South African music, the songs are never only one thing but serve many purposes.