Deep harmonies and peaceful words filled the State Theater last Friday night as Ithaca received South Africa’s “Cultural Emissaries to the World,” Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Singing two sets of traditional and contemporary isicathamiya harmonies, the nine member male choral group engaged the audience in their themes of “peace, love and harmony.”

Most songs consisted of a low, rhythmic harmony sung by eight members, with the ninth singing a nonchalant tenor or alto melody.

Upbeat songs were accompanied by fun dancing in which Mambazo’s members seemed more content to move with their own style than to match the group. Two dozen concertgoers felt inspired to do the same, and so took to the stage with the group, giving an Ithaca twist to the South African dance.

Crowd participation also included a valiant, though linguistically challenged, attempt to sing in Zulu.

The stellar vocals at the show were rivaled in intensity only by the story behind them. “This is a song about suffering,” noted Joseph Shabalala of one piece. Shabalala founded and originally crafted much of the future Ladysmith Black Mambazo in the context of South Africa’s oppressive racial apartheid.

When Nelson Mandela traveled to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his struggle against the apartheid, he asked Mambazo to attend the ceremonies by his side. When Mandela became president, “Cultural Emissaries at Home and Abroad” became an official state title, filled by none other than Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

Although Ladysmith Black Mambazo is the best-selling group on the continent of Africa, most American listeners became acquainted with Mambazo through Paul Simon’s album Graceland, now in its 21st year.

For the uninitiated, the tone of the music very distantly resembles the 1961 novelty-pop song, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by the Tokens, a song whose roots lie in a 1939 African pop song called “Mbube,” which is the Zulu word for lion. “Mbube” is a song in Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s repertoire, although it was not performed at the show on Friday.

Especially notable was the encore song, “Shosholoza,” a song which Mambazo said they “play in arenas for [their] World Cup team.” The group hesitated to play the song for would-be supporters of a rival team.

Shabalala tells that the idea of Mambazo was an actual dream which he had. Ladysmith is the hometown of the Shabalala family, the place where Joseph returned to bring together his band. The group’s middle name derives from the color of the most powerful ox, and mambazo is the Zulu word for “ax,” symbolic of how the group “cuts down the competition.”

The concert came right on the heels of news on Thursday that the group’s founder, Joseph Shabalala, would be retiring later this year. Shabalala intends to hand control of the group over to his son, Thamsanqa. Ladysmith Black Mambazo has always had strong family ties; currently four of Shabalala’s sons are members, and the group has featured cousins and uncles through the years.

Shabalala concluded this announcement by saying, “Ladysmith Black Mambazo must continue as the message of peace, love and harmony never must be silenced. We never will be silenced and we hope our fans and friends around the world will keep wanting to hear this message.”

On Friday night it was clear that, at least in Ithaca, people will want to keep hearing their message.

-- by Brad Lipovsky