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 […]
By chris
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Also posted in 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 […]
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 […]
If you’ve ever wondered how “35 pennywhistlers and two drummers, dressed in Scout hats, kilts, tartan sashes, and neckerchiefs” could possibly be connected to the 1956 Alexandra bus boycott, then David B. Coplan’s essay Sophiatown and South African Jazz: Re-appropriating a Cultural Identity is for you. Telling the story of life, and music in particular, […]
The City of Johannesburg website reports that the Buskaid Orchestra of Soweto will be performing as part of the BBC Proms in London on Sunday 15 July.
Buskaid plays mainly classical music, with a fusion of classic pop and kwela.
You can find out more about Buskaid in the Kwela Project’s post “Unite with the Buskaid Soweto […]
April 14, 2007 – 10:17 pm
… by accepting the MySpace Terms and Conditions.
Postively Testcard, “South-East London’s premier whistle-driven afroskankabilly instrumental beat combo” emailed me with this scintillating fact (which is, indeed, more news-worthy than today’s other headline story) today. Their follow-up email included the relevant URL too :-) When I looked, there were two, complete tunes for our enjoyment - […]
Kwela Project link repository