With a sound that immediately conjures visions of the vast windy plains of Africa, the 10 piece a cappella group Ladysmith Black Mambazo has, over the past 20 years, assumed the popular forefront of what has come to be known as world music, a wide ranging and often graceful combination of indigenous ethnic styles fused with Western influences.

A colorful energetic and uplifting spectacle, Ladysmith Black Mambazo will grace the stage of the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, State and Second Streets, Troy, Sunday, February 22 at 7p.m., allowing Capital District residents a chance to be transported be their soothing music and spiritual alchemy that has won over audiences in every part of the world. 

The roots of the group go back to the early 1960s when Joseph Shabalala from the township of Ladysmith joined the top Zulu singing group, The Blacks.  In those days groups were rarely heard outside their geographic region (with the possible exception of a song called “Wimoweh,” which was appropriated from a 1930’s Zulu singer by a very popular American folksinger from the 1950/60s – I wont mention the name as this matter is still in litigation – and later turned into a Top Ten hit called “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens).

The Zulu groups competed in local music showdowns, which must have been precursors to the kind of grueling, boasting rap contests seen in Eminem’s 8 Mile.

When Shabalala converted to Christianity in the mid-60s, he became enthralled with the beauty, delicacy and strength of the classic gospel hymnbook.  He brought his discovery and newfound enthusiasm for God to The Blacks, who wanted no part of it.  He quite The Blacks and founded a new group, Ladysmith Black Mambazo – Ladysmith for his rural hometown, Black for the oxen, the strongest of all farm animals and Mambazo, the Zulu word for axe, implying the group’s ability to chop down any rival who might challenge them in those grizzly singing contests.

The group borrows heavily from a traditional music called iscathamiya, which developed in the mines of South Africa, where black workers were taken by rail to work far from their homes and families.

Poorly housed and paid even worse, the mine workers would entertain themselves after a six-day week by the singing songs into the wee hours of the Sunday Morning.  When the miners returned to their homelands, the musical tradition returned with them. 

While the group also draws heavily from the Christian songbook, Shabalala is quick to point out that the message in his music is not specific to any one religious orientation.

“Without knowing what the words mean (most are sung in Zulu and various African dialects), the music gets into the blood, because if comes from the blood,” Shabalala said in a promotional piece from their American record label, Heads Up.  “It evoked enthusiasm and excitement, regardless of what you follow spiritually.”

Their music, which is delivered a cappella (without instruments – just voices), also incorporated elements of doo-wop and reggae, more so in recent years as their world beat becomes more universal and they are exposed to more disparate music styles.  The band is comprised of seven bass voices, a tenor, an alto and Shabalala on melody.

The booming high section is reminiscent of the Zulu style, with enough power behind them to allow some singers to split off and create textured vocal rhythms.  These include tongue click, bird-like trills and guttural gulps that re-enforce the polyrhythms to the beats created by the large groups’ dancing footsteps, handclaps, and interweaving harmony chords.  The alto and tenor voices ass the western complexity and depth to the call and response chord structures that answer Shabalala’s melody.

World music flowed in the 1980s, when rock musicians such as Peter Gabriel (of Genesis) and David Byrne (who’s group Talking Heads, had gotten the ball rolling by supplementing their art school minimalism with Afro-reggae influences early 80s LPs like Remain In Light and Speaking in Tongues) were searching from something new to spice up their music.

But it was Paul Simon who latched onto Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  He was a huge star in the 1960s with this old partner Art Garfunkel and had quite a string of catchy hit solo singles in the 70s (“Kodschrome,” “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”), but the mood of the 90s was darker, more experimental.  He unleashed Graceland to an unsuspecting public in 1986.  The critically and commercially acclaimed album featured Ladysmith performing a song called ”Homeless,” a plaint about dispossession made even more powerful by the fact that it was sing by a group from apartheid South Africa.  It was a perfect, if impermanent marriage, and the song became Ladysmith’s calling card during their early years on the international stage.

With a few notable exceptions, world beat failed to become a commercial blockbuster in the West.  Byrne became more enamored of techno, Gabriel followed Sting into more commercial excursions, and Simon just got lost, relying on periodic reunions with old partner Garfunkel to shore up a sagging career that was almost extinguished by The Capeman, a badly conceived Broadway Group.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo was the exception.  Their shimmering, joyful, yet poignant songs struck a chord with a public that was fast becoming fed up with political oppression and apartheid.  Ladysmith was the voice of the struggle, a jubilant, affirming voice.  While some world artiest were savaged for diluting their sounds for mass consumption, Ladysmith remained above the fray, assured of good standing by their answering belief that Africa would someday return to its rightful owners.

When apartheid was abolished in 1994, Ladysmith was no longer dispossessed from their own country and no longer in need of a famous patron in the west.  They became emblematic of Africa’s struggle to heal itself after years of oppression and the voice of a people trying to establish an identity in the face of almost unbelievable odds.

Their new album, Raise your Spirit Higher, is their first since 1999’s Grammy-nominated Live at Royal Albert Hall and their first all-new material since 1997.  It incorporates all the elements one would expect from the band, including a song inviting all the world to invest in the “new” Africa; a tribute to their hometowns: a song (sung in English) that is essentially a PSA reminding Africans to use their seatbelts; songs about idealism and core religious convictions, as well as racism; and numerous praises to God.

There is also a short album closer sung by Shabalala’s grandsons (three of Shabalala’s sons are in the current Ladysmith lineup) that shows just how multicultural the world beat has become.  In “Tribute,” Shabalala’s grandsons sing for Shabalala’s late wife, Nellie, their grandmother, in a style that embraces the Zulu elements the band is known for, but also sprinkles in healthy doses of western rap and smooth 1990s R&B (a la Boys to Men).

While the bulk of the album may not be revelatory, this tiny closing segment shows the way to the future as the world becomes truly globalized and all the prevailing styles from around the world become on smooth, sinuous sound.

Ladysmith knows there is still a lot of work to do in remaking Africa.  They also know that their role is not to be part of the ethnic, political and tribal upheavals, but to comment on them to show the way to both the Africans and the world and to reaffirm the faith that renewal is possible.  The also seem to know that the music, like the continent, music continue to evolve.  This new CD is a small but significant step in that direction.