Aaron “Big Voice Jack” Lerole was one of the most influential kwela stars and, in a revival of his popularity that is described in Keith Addison’s 1998 article ‘Return of the Big Voice‘, must have been one of the last of the originators to still be recording.
The story of how Big Voice Jack ended up [...]
By chris
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Also posted in Bands and Musicians, Performance, Video
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Tagged Alexandra, Big, Black Mambazo, diepkloof, Jack, Jake, Lerole, Shukumo Mambazo, Soweto, Voice
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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 Bands and Musicians, Broadcast, 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 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 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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]