April 20, 2008 – 10:40 pm
Following on from my last post about the Kachamba Brothers, I decided to try and find out more.
First of all, I found some interesting photographs of Donald and ‘friends’ jamming together. These pictures were taken by Rike and Henrik Bettermann when they visited Chileka in Malawi as part of their 1996/97 tour of West and […]
Posted in Bands and Musicians, Broadcast, History, Images, Instruments, Recording, Weblogs
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Tagged audio, babatoni, bettermann, burns, chileka, dulcimergirl, kachamba, malawi, UCLA
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March 30, 2008 – 11:06 pm
The Voice of America web site is running a very interesting African Music blog - well worth checking out.
Matthew LaVoie has written a fascinating post entitled Musical Sunshine from Malawi which outlines how the Kachamba brothers, Daniel and Donald, discovered kwela to the city that is now Harare, but was then called Salisbury, and bought […]
October 28, 2007 – 3:46 pm
I apologise for the elapsed time since my last post - I’ve been busy learning guitar and catching up with old friends. In addition I switched from one kwela arrangement project (that proved a bit too complicated at the time) to another that I am presenting here…
A couple of posts back in ‘Rare Willard Cele […]
October 2, 2007 – 10:48 pm
Skokiaan is a significant instrumental that was composed, performed and recorded originally in South Africa’s neighbour, Zimbabwe. We’ve already seen that the influence of kwela has been felt in this country, and although Skokiaan is described as tsaba-tsaba, it shares a common ancestor with kwela: marabi.
The instrumental was later recorded by Gallotone (which, perhaps, lead […]
Posted in Bands and Musicians, History, Playing, Recording
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Tagged audio, bulawayo, gallotone, musarurwa, sheet music, skokiaan, tsaba-tsaba, zimbabwe
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September 18, 2007 – 9:18 pm
Many thanks to The In Crowd and his/her learning2share blog for making these very early Willard Cele tracks available. Willard was the inspiration for many kwela players, maybe including Spokes Mashiyane. Listen to these recordings (Penny Whistle Blues and Penny Whistle Boogie) and you’ll hear quite a different style of kwela to that recorded by […]
September 11, 2007 – 10:35 pm
The song Inkomo Zodwa was recorded by Miriam Makeba and the Skylarks in March 1959 and features Spokes Mashiyane on the pennywhistle. It is accredited to the South African playwright Gibson Kente. I originally got hold of this track on The Rough Guide to the Music of South Africa, and you can too (although I […]
August 22, 2007 – 10:46 am
Last.fm has some good recorded content that is tagged kwela - unfortunately I can’t figure out how to embed the player here and then not complain that there is ‘Not enough content to play this station’. Follow the link to kwela on last.fm and check it out there - if it complains, try reloading the […]
August 10, 2007 – 11:26 pm
This tune - Little Lemmy - is played by Little Lemmy (’Special’ Mabaso) with Big Joe on alto sax (I might be making that second bit up - but he is credited as playing, and it sounds like Lemmy on the whistle). It can be found on the old, Decca LK 4292 “Something New from […]
Back in June there was a blip in the visitor stats that was the result of a link to the Kwela Project from a post in the Banjoroots Yahoo group. The post was about Africa-American single-stringed instruments, and as well as mentioning the renowned ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik (who happens to play clarinet in Donald […]
With a web site with as little traffic as the Kwela Project, it’s pretty easy to notice what kind of things are bringing visitors here. For example, Sunday’s BBC Prom performance by the Buskaid Soweto String Project, which you can still listen to online, resulted in a number of visits that had been referred from […]
Kwela Project link repository