Ladysmith Black Mambazo Albums Download Mp3
Charise Farag
When Graceland was awarded the Grammy as record of the year, many in the audience believed that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences was recognizing more than a single album, star, group, or production. Graceland brought New African popular music out of the boycott/embargo that apartheid and its foes had erected around it. In the years since, the music forms, as represented by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, have quickly become among the most popular for both listening and dancing, with a growing audience throughout the world.
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"Humanity's first instrument was the human voice." This is the basic philosophy behind much of postmodern experimental performance. It is also the truth behind the music that a Zulu choir brought out of South Africa into recording and concert prominence in the United States. The ten members of Ladysmith Black Mambazo were the best-selling group in the Union of South Africa. After their participation in Paul Simon's 1986 Graceland album and tour, they became popular recording artists in the United States and worldwide.
The group, led by Joseph Shabalala, present a Zulu harmonic and variation style known as mbube. Stefan Grossman, distributor of the group's albums on Shanachie Records and a major influence on the rise of knowledgeable audiences for African music in America, described their style as "a timeless beauty that transcends culture, language and all other artificial barriers dividing humanity." American audiences, attracted by the beat and the shifting harmonies, have purchased Ladysmith Black Mambazo's own four albums, Induku Zethu, Umthombo Wamanzi, Ulwande Olungwele, and Inala, in greater and greater numbers.
The group began in 1964, when Joseph Shabalala dreamed of pure vocal harmonies in the style known as isicathamiya, originated by black workers in the South African mines. Impoverished and far from their families, they entertained themselves after six-day work weeks by singing. When they returned to their homes, they brought this music with them, and the fierce vocal and musical competitions among groups became a much-loved feature of local life. When Shabalala returned to his home town of Ladysmith after working in a factory in Durban, he founded his own singing group. In 1964, after hearing the music in his dream, he taught it to the members of his group, and after they incorporated it, they won almost every singing competition they entered. He named his group Ladysmith Black Mambazo after his hometown; "black" is a reference to a black ox, considered to be the strongest kind; and "mambazo" means "axe" symbolizing the group's skill in "chopping down" their musical competitors. They were so good at winning, in fact, that they were eventually banned from competing, but they were welcome to perform at any competition.
In 1970 they won their first record contract after a radio performance. In 1975, Shabalala converted to Christianity, and the group released their first Christian album, Ukukhanya Kwelanga. After this, the group's music was based largely on Methodist hymns, and their 1976 album, Ukusindiswa, became a popular religious album in South Africa. The group first traveled outside South Africa in 1981, when the government of South Africa allowed them to go to Germany to perform.
However, it was not until the release of the Graceland album in 1986, with its subsequent tour and television special, that most North Americans got to know Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Paul Simon heard the group when he was considering which of many African musical ensembles to include in his 1986 album (which was recorded in London). He selected the group, along with Tao Ea Matsekha, the Boyoyo Boys and others, as examples of the "mbaqanga" sound (roughly translatable as "township jive"). The sound had political connotations within Africa and, as Simon recognized, the music had an attractive beat with international appeal. The group's cuts on the Graceland album, "Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes" and "Homeless" (by Simon and Shabalala), were tremendously successful, as were Ladysmith's promotional performances with Simon on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" and their participation in the Graceland concerts.
Over thirty different men have sung with the group over the more than four decades it has been in existence; some have stayed only long enough to record an album in the studio, and others have been with the group since its inception. Very popular in South Africa, the group came to prominence in the United States after performing on the Paul Simon album Graceland, 1986; toured with Simon, 1987, and appeared on his television special; have also toured the United States independently and appeared on television series Saturday Night Live; released Raise Your Spirit Higher, 2004; released No Boundaries, 2004; released Long Walk to Freedom, 2006; have performed at numerous international occasions, including inaugurations of South African presidents and at performances for the Pope and the Queen of England; their music has been featured in many films and commercials.
Critical and audience acclaim was just as positive when the Graceland tour returned to New York in July for appearances at Madison Square Garden, and the group's rapport was also evident in the television special "Graceland: The African Concert," taped in Zimbabwe for Showtime Entertainment and broadcast on the cable network in May of 1987. Vince Aletti in the Village Voice described Ladysmith as "a 10-man a capella choir that fills the stage with concentrated energy [and] begins to pivot, kick and bounce in unison."
Graceland was awarded the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1986, and the album helped to bring New African popular music out of the boycott/embargo that apartheid had erected around it. In the years since, the musical forms, as represented by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, have quickly become popular for both listening and dancing, with a growing audience throughout the world.
South African politics played a part in the group's career in the early 1990s. The apartheid system that separated racial groups was abolished in 1991, and Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in prison. The group's first post-apartheid release, Liph' Iqiniso, included a song that celebrated the demise of the repressive system. In 1994, when Mandela was inaugurated as president of South Africa, the group sang at his inauguration.
In 1998, the group's song "Inkanyezi Nezazi" (The Star and the Wiseman) was featured in a series of television commercials for Heinz in the United Kingdom. The advertisements were so popular that the group released the song as a single, then followed it with The Best of Ladysmith Black Mambazo: The Star and the Wiseman. Helped by the popularity of the commercials, the album sold a million copies in the UK alone and the single reached #2 in the British pop charts. In the United States, the group was featured in two well-known commercials for Lifesavers candy and for 7-Up.
In 1992, the group was featured in a play about the apartheid era, The Song of Jacob Zulu, first performed by the Steppenwolf Theater Company of Chicago. The play opened on Broadway in the spring of 1993 and was nominated for six Tony Awards. The group won the Drama Desk Award for Best Original Score for the music used in the play.
Over the years, the group has performed at many prestigious events, including a performance for the Queen of England and the Royal Family at the Royal Albert Hall in London. They have also sung at two Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies; for Pope John Paul II in Rome; for South African presidential inaugurations; for the 1996 Summer Olympics; and at music award ceremonies around the world. They also represented South Africa at the celebration of Queen Elizabeth II's 50th anniversary as monarch of the United Kingdom.
In 2001, On Tip Toe: Gentle Steps to Freedom, a documentary film about Shabalala and the group, was released. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Documentary and was also nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Cultural Documentary on American television.
Long Walk to Freedom was released in 2006 to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Graceland. The album was a collection of past favorites, including two from Graceland. The album, which was nominated for a Grammy award, also included many guest performers, including Emmylou Harris, Melissa Etheridge, Sarah McLaughlin, and guitarist Taj Mahal.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the colorful men's choral ensemble led by Joseph Shabalala, is a musical diplomatic corps representing postapartheid South Africa and the liberation of black traditions from repressive policies reaching back to the nineteenth century. Their greatest international renown resulted from their collaboration with Paul Simon, the American singer/songwriter, on the album Graceland (1985).
Shabalala established his own band in Durban in 1960 but in 1964 claimed to have heard new harmonies in a dream. Consequently he converted to Christianity and induced his brothers Headman and Jockey and their cousins the Mazibuko brothers into joining Ladysmith (for the name of their hometown) Black (referring to black oxen) Mambazo (axe, meaning they cut the competition).
Their first album, Amabutho (1973), was the first African LP to go gold (sales of 25,000). The ensemble steadily issued other highly successful records in Africa into the mid-1980s. But they gained worldwide renown when Simon discovered them on pirated cassette tapes, visited South Africa to find Shabalala, signed Ladysmith Black Mambazo to Warner Bros., and produced their first U.S. album, the Grammy-winning Shaka Zulu (1987). In a controversial move Simon toured with the ensemble during the global boycott of South Africa prior to apartheid's fall. Simon and Shabalala believed it better to express South Africa's black culture than to silence themselves to shame the white government.