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 South Africa. One of the pictures is the same as the babatoni picture in an earlier post about babatoni - the kwela bass. A linked page contains a biography for Donald Kachamba, and notes that he died on 12 January 2001.

Shortly before Donald died, he was an artist-in-residence (November 1999 until July 2000) at UCLA’s Department of Ethnomusicology. Christie Burns (a.k.a Dulcimergirl) was one of the students that worked with Donald during this time, and she presents some of her memories, and a great recording of the students and Donald together, in her music blog.

You can get hold of the UCLA course material; a song/essays book, and a CD recording (including the tune in Christie’s blog). I’ll review my copies here, just as soon as they arrive from Amazon.

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 it back to Malawi (the Nyasaland) in 1961.

The post goes on to explain the role that Austrian ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik played in promoting the brother’s music abroad under the moniker of Donald Kachamba’s Kwela Heritage Jazz Band, in which he played clarinet.

Best of all, this blog is full of example recordings by the featured artists, and the Kachamba Brothers are no exception. There are two kwelas to listen to: ‘Malawi Moto’ and ‘Malawi Cha-cha-cha’. I like the frantic tempo and vocals (which seem rare in kwela - the musicians usually preferring to play whistle) - I hope you enjoy these recordings too!

A couple of posts back in ‘Rare Willard Cele Recordings‘ we encountered on of the earliest recorded kwela pennywhistlers: Willard Celes. I was particularly intrigued by the similarity between these recordings, and traditional USA jazz/blues played on the clarinet. It would be great to find out how Willard came to sound like this. Here we have a 12 bar blues structure that I’ve not seen in kwela recordings anywhere else. Since the 12 bar blues is pretty much universally understood, you might be able to find some other willing musicians with which to play. If you play a Bb whistle, then a capo of the first fret will enable a guitarist to play in the very blues-friendly key of A.

This arrangement is based upon the first 48 bars, which I’ve adapted for pennywhistle. The recording seems to be in the key of G! Yet more evidence that kwela pennywhistlers were getting low whistles from somewhere.

Pennywhistle Boogie whistle part, played by Willard Cele

The instrumental was later recorded by Gallotone (which, perhaps, lead to the confusion as to whether it was a South African-composed tune or not) and released in the USA by London Records. It met with considerable success and has been recorded by loads and loads of artists since, practically right up to the present day.

It wasn’t until I discovered the learning2share blog a couple of weeks back for the Willard Cele kwela project post that I had a chance to really hear Skokiaan, and I thought that it would be a great idea to have a go at arranging the melody for whistle in the kwela style.

Just about everything that is currently known about Skokiaan can be found on the Skokiaan Wikipedia page, so take a look there and then come back to learn how to play some of it!

The arrangement I’ve made can be played on a Bb whistle and will sound in tune (more or less) with the Bulawayo Sweet Rhythms Band recording on learning2share. You’ve got the introduction and first 24 bars; after that you’re on your own :-)

Happy kwela-whistling!

Skokiaan melody, maybe originally played by August Musarurwa.

Spoke’s whistle part is a constant solo throughout the song, playing in the lower registers during the singing, and rising up in volume and pitch in between. The key signature is somewhere between F and F#, and if we assume F, then Spoke’s whistle playing goes right down to low F. We’re talking Low Whistle territory here, and I must say that I’m rather surprised by the idea that Spoke’s had a low F - I mean, these aren’t so easy to come by nowadays and I daresay that Overton didn’t exist back then (if you have any ideas how this was played, I’d be very happy to hear them!)…

Leaving the academics behind; I’ve party transcribed, partly made up (the low bits of) the whistle part so that this can be played, along with the recording, on a Bb whistle - it’s sure to bring a tear to your eye. You might like to fractionally pitch shift it to get it in tune. -130% semitone did it for me using the demo version of Ableton. [I’ve subsequently learnt that this kind of manipulation is possible using Audacity, which is free]

I hope you enjoy trying to play this part and that it encourages you to listen to some of these old kwela recordings.

Inkomo Zodwa whistle part, played by Spokes.

I have transcribed the theme (first four bars, repeated four times) which occurs at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the piece, as well as the first whistle solo. There is another whistle solo and a couple of sax solos in the complete piece which, as usual, lasts almost exactly two minutes and thirty seconds (so that two tunes fit on one side of a 45rpm single - well, that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it!). You should be aiming for a speed of 150bpm (where a beat is a dotted crotchet (that’s a dotted Quarter Note to our USA pals)) which is pretty fast, especially on the run in bars 15-16.

I have no idea why I accredited the piece to Mokonotela - I must have read it off another piece by accident. The tune is actually accredited to ‘Hill’ - I wonder who that is?

If you enjoy playing this (or if you don’t) - please let me know by leaving a comment.

About a week ago, someone arrived at the Kwela Project as a result of typing ‘learn kwela‘ into Google. It has always been my intention that the project help aspiring kwelaleses (made up group noun) with music and technical tips, but it’s taken this long to listen to enough music, and read around the subject enough to feel that I’ve something worth saying.

Dolos is a catchy tune by Spokes Mashiyane that is the seventh track on King Kwela CD (or first track on side two if you’ve got vinyl). There are four main themes that Spokes varies and elaborates upon - these are transcribed below. Although they’re written in the key of D major, play them on a B flat whistle to be in the same key as the recording. Most kwela is played on a B flat whistle.