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, History, Images, Instruments, 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 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 […]
Every now and again I find something really interesting as a result of the kwela project. It’s not always about kwela either, but in this case I’d say there’s quite a strong connection. ýlowek scavel-cronek is a blog that presents music that can’t be found in the shops any more. The first track on Take […]
Ten Real Audio :-( tracks spanning some fifty years of South African music from 50s kwela to 90s bubblegum. Presented by Andy Kershaw, the flippin’ hypocrite fades each track after only about 30s - in much the same way that Kirsty Young curtailed Andy’s Desert Island Discs - much to his annoyance! Still, there’s some […]
It’s always interesting to hear contemporary interpretations of kwela and to learn more about those who are bringing these sounds to our ears some fifty years after kwela’s heyday. I stumbled upon Buskaid whilst undertaking some search-engine led investigation regarding a long-forgotten question, and what a fortunate turn of events this has been.
Buskaid is a […]
Four seconds short of the nominal 3 minute 30 second kwela format, the Solven Whistlers recording of Kwela Blues is to be found in the Gallo CD Sampler currently shipping with the May 2007 edition of Songlines magazine. “The Very Best in South African Music” contains the following tracks:
Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens
Lilizela Mlilizeli
African Jazz […]
Kwela Project link repository