Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents an excerpt of an online article entitled "The development of Music in South Africa timeline 1600-2004".The content of this post is presented for historical, cultural, and educational purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to the South African History Online writer/s and online publisher/s of this article.
-snip-
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-influence-of-late-19th-century.html for the closely related pancocojams post entitled "The Influence Of Late 19th Century African American Minstrel Groups Performing In South Africa On South African Music".
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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S NOTES
Pancocojams blog visitors are encouraged to read this entire article although the complete timeline (including the portions that I didn't quote] doesn't list (and probably wasn't intended to list) the entire numbers of music genres in the nation of South Africa.
For example, this time line doesn't list any religious genres of music in South Africa including Zionist churches singing styles and popular Gospel choirs such as Joyous Celebration.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MUSIC IN SOUTH AFRICA TIMELINE 1600-2004
"1600s
The Khoi-Khoi developed the ramkie, a guitar with three or
four strings, based on that of Malabar slaves. They used it to blend Khoi and
Western folk songs.
Then there was the mamokhorong. It was a single-string
violin that was used by the Khoi in their own music making and in the dances of
the colonial centre, Cape Town, which rapidly became a melting pot of cultural
influences from all over the world.
The governor of the Cape had his own slave orchestra in the
1670s.
1800s
In a style similar to that of British marching military
bands, coloured (mixed race) bands of musicians began parading through the
streets of Cape Town in the early 1820s, a tradition that was given added
impetus by the travelling minstrel shows of the 1880s. This tradition has
continued to the present day with the great carnival held in Cape Town every
New Year.
The penetration of missionaries into the interior over the
succeeding centuries also had a profound influence on South African musical
styles. In the late 1800s, early African composers such as John Knox Bokwe
began composing hymns that drew on traditional Xhosa harmonic patterns.
The development of a black urban proletariat and the
movement of many black workers to the mines in the 1800s meant that differing
regional traditional folk music met and began to flow into one another. Western
instrumentation was used to adapt rural songs, which in turn started to
influence the development of new hybrid styles of music-making (as well as
dances) in the developing urban centres.
1860s
In the mid-1800s, travelling minstrel shows began to visit
South Africa. As far as can be ascertained, these minstrels were at first white
performers in "black-face", but by the 1860s black American minstrel
troupes had begun to tour the country. They sang spirituals of the American
South, and influenced many South African groups to form themselves into similar
choirs; soon regular meetings and competitions between such choirs were
popular, forming an entire subculture that continues to this day.
1890s
Orpheus McAdoo and the Virginia Jubilee Singers were among
the most popular of the visiting minstrel groups, touring the country four
times. African American spirituals were made popular in the 1890s by Orpheus
McAdoo's Jubilee Singers
1897
Enoch Sontonga, then a teacher, composed the hymn Nkosi
Sikelel' iAfrika (God Bless Africa) Early 1900s
In the early 20th century, governmental restrictions on
black poeple increased, including a nightly curfew which kept the night life in
Johannesburg relatively small for a city of its size (then the largest city
south of the Sahara).
The Marabi music style formed in the slum yards that
resulted from the increasing urbanisation of black South Africans into mining
centres such as the Witwatersrand. The sound of marabi was intended to draw
people into the shebeens (bars selling homemade liquor or skokiaan) and then to
get them dancing. Marabi was played on pianos with accompaniment from
pebble-filled cans. Over the succeeding decades, the marabi-swing style
developed into early mbaqanga, the most distinctive form of South African jazz
1912
South African popular music began in 1912 with the first
commercial recordings.
1920s
Marabi's melodies found their way into the sounds of the
bigger dance bands, modelled on American swing groups, which began to appear in
the 1920s; Marabi added to their distinctively South African style. Such bands,
which produced the first generation of professional black musicians in South
Africa, achieved considerable popularity, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s:
star groups such as The Jazz Maniacs, The Merry Blackbirds and the Jazz
Revelers rose to fame, winning huge audiences among both blacks and whites.
1930s
The beginnings of broadcast radio for black listeners. This
resulted in the growth of an indigenous recording industry and helped
popularize black South African music. The 1930s also saw the spread of Zulu a
cappella singing from the Natal area to much of South Africa.
1933
Eric Gallo's Brunswick Gramophone House sent several South
African musicians to London to record for Singer Records. Gallo went on to
begin producing music in South Africa.
1939
The tradition of minstrelsy, joined with other forms,
contributed to the development of isicathamiya, This music form had its first
major hit this year with the song "Mbube", an adaptation of a
traditional Zulu melody which has been recycled and reworked innumerable times
since then, often known as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight".
Solomon Linda's Original Evening Birds, recorded
"Mbube" it was probably the first African recording to sell more than
100,000 copies.
1940s
From the late 1940s to the 1960s, a form of music called
isikhwela jo was popular, though national interest waned in the 50s until Radio
Zulu began broadcasting across Natal, Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
1950s
South African music came into International prominence with
the formation of Kwela (Zulu for 'get-up' or in township slang it also referred
to the police vans, the "kwela-kwela") music, which was greatly
influenced by Marabi sounds. The primary instrument of kwela, in the beginning,
was the pennywhistle, a cheap and simple instrument that was taken up by street
performers in the shantytowns. Lemmy Mabaso was one of the most notable
musicians of this genre.
The older strains of marabi and kwela saw the birth of what
is broadly thought of as mbaqanga, the mode of African-inflected jazz that had
many and various practitioners, with a large number of bands competing for
attention and income. Singing stars such as Miriam Makeba, Dolly Rathebe and
Letta Mbulu gained fanatical followings.
Later in the 1950s a new black urban music culture started
to emerge in Sophiatown. Marabi met with traditional dance styles such as the
Zulu indlamu and American big band swing. The indlamu tendency resulted in the
"African stomp" style, giving a notably African rhythmic impulse to
the music.
The lawless domain which was Sophiatown was one in which
black people could interact with the more adventurous, liberal whites drawn to
the excitements of its nightlife, becoming a touchstone for the first real
cultural and social interchange between the races to take place in South
Africa.
Miriam Makeba was a central figure in the African jazz scene
throughout the 1950s. By the early 1960s, she was an international star and
brought attention to South African apartheid.
1951
Willard Cele appeared in the film The Magic Garden, which
spawned a legion of more imitators and fans. Willard Cele is credited with
creating pennywhistle by placing the six-holed flute between his teeth at an
angle.
1954
Spokes Mashiyane's "Ace Blues" became the biggest
African hit of the year and launched pennywhistle as a mainstream genre.
1955
The most progressive jazz-lovers of Sophiatown formed the
Sophiatown Modern Jazz Club, propagating the sounds of bop innovators such as
Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. The jazz club sponsored gatherings and from
such meetings grew South Africa's first bebop band, the important and
influential Jazz Epistles: The earliest members were musicians destined to
shape South African jazz from then on: Dollar Brand, Kippie Moeketsi, Jonas
Gwangwa and Hugh Masekela.
1959
The recording "Tom Hark" by Elias Lerole and His
Zigzag Flutes was a hit around the world.
In 1959, American pianist John Mehegan organized a recording
session using many of the most prominent South African jazz musicians,
resoluting in the first two African jazz LPs.
1960s
The white Nationalist government brought the musically vital
era, Sophiatown, to an end. They forcibly removed the inhabitants of Sophiatown
to townships such as Soweto, outside Johannesburg. Sophiatown was razed and the
white suburb of Triomf built in its place.
In the wake of the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 and the
subsequent State of Emergency and mass arrests, bannings and trials of
activists challenging apartheid laws, more and more musicians found it
necessary to leave the country.
Many key figures in South African jazz developed their
talents and their careers outside the country in the years of increasing
repression, amoung them were: Dollar Brand (later Abdullah Ibrahim, after his
conversion to Islam), Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Caiphas Semenya, Letta
Mbulu, and Miriam Makeba Well-known South African Jazz band, The Blue Notes,
left for England in 1960. The band included: Chris MacGregor, Dudu Pukwana,
Mongezi Feza, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo.
[…].
The First Cold Castle National Jazz Festival was held in
1960, which brought additional attention to South African jazz. Cold Castle
became an annual event for a few year, and brought out more musicians,
especially Dudu Pukwana, Gideon Nxumalo and Chris McGregor.
1962
The South African government launched a development
programme for Bantu Radio in order to foster separate development and encourage
independence for the Bantustans. Though the government had expected Bantu Radio
to play folk music, African music had developed into numerous pop genres, and
the nascent recording studios used radio to push their pop stars. The new focus
on radio led to a government crackdown on lyrics, censoring songs which were
considered a "public hazard".
Abdullah Ibrahim went overseas for the first time, to
Switzerland. The pianist-composer met and impressed Duke Ellington himself, who
sponsored his first recordings.
1963
The 1963 Cold Castle festival produced an LP called Jazz The
African Sound, but government oppression soon ended the jazz scene. Again, many
musicians emigrated to the UK or other countries.
[…]
1970s
[…]
1973
Ladysmith Black Mambazo, headed by the sweet soprano of
Joseph Shabalala, released their first album, Amabutho, which was also the
first gold record by black musicians. This band became perhaps the biggest
stars in South Africa's history, reforming the sound of Zulu a cappella.
1975
American disco was imported to South Africa, and disco beats
were added to soul music.
1976
South African children rebelled en masse against apartheid
and governmental authority, and a vibrant, youthful counterculture was created,
with music as an integral part of its focus. Few South African bands gained a
lasting success during this period, however, with the exception of the Movers,
who used marabi elements in their soul.
[…]
1980s
The 1980s saw the appearance of Afro-jazz bands such as
Sakhile and Bayete, marrying the sounds of American fusion and ancient African
patterns, to considerable commercial success.
A genre of music referred to as 'bubblegum' emerged from the
townships.
[…]
At the same time, a crossover was beginning to happen
between black and white musicians.
Johnny Clegg, a sociologist who learnt so much about Zulu
music and dance that he formed his own group, Juluka, with Sipho Mchunu, led
the charge. Juluka's ability to mix traditional Zulu music with white pop and
folk was in itself a challenge to the racial boundaries the apartheid regime
attempted to erect between blacks and whites. With often a more pop-driven
style, bands such as eVoid, Via Afrika and Mango Groove followed the crossover
trail blazed by Clegg (hailed overseas as "the white Zulu"), whose later
band, Savuka, continued to reproduce his earlier success.
Hugh Masekela set up a mobile studio in Botswana, just over
the South African border. Here he collaborated with West and Central African
musicians.
1980
Following international superstar Bob Marley's concert
celebrating Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, reggae took hold across Africa.
Lucky Dube was the first major South African artists; his style was modelled
most closely on that of Peter Tosh.
[…]
The late 1980s saw the rise of Yvonne Chaka Chaka, beginning
with her 1984 hit "I'm in Love With a DJ", which was the first major
hit for bubblegum.
1985
Brenda Fassie's huge hit 'weekend special' was released.
Brenda Fassie is perhaps the most controversial and the best-known figure in
township pop.
This is also the year that fifty-four American pop artists,
calling themselves "Artists United Against Apartheid" released the
track "Sun City," which includes the lyric "Relocation to phony
homelands Separation of families I can't understand Twenty-three million can't
vote because they're black We're stabbing our brothers and sisters in the
back." The song was nominated for a Grammy award and raised more than one
million dollars for the anti-apartheid cause.
1986
Ladysmith Black Mambazo took their first step into the
international arena via Paul Simon on his Graceland album in 1986.
1990s
[…]
In the 1990s, a new style of township music grabbed the
attention and the hearts of South Africa's black youth. That music was kwaito,
probably now the biggest force in the South African music scene.
[…]
1994
In 1994, South African media was liberalized and new musical
styles arose. Prophets of Da City became known as a premier hip hop crew,
though a South Africanized style of hip hop known as kwaito soon replaced
actual hip hop groups. In kwaito, synthesizers and other electronic instruments
are common, and slow jams adopted from Chicago house musicians like The
Fingers, Tony Humphries and Robert Owen are also standard. Stars of kwaito
include Trompies, Bongo Maffin and Boom Shaka.
1997
Brenda Fassie made a significant comeback with her album
"Memeza" (meaning "Shout"), which spawned the huge hit
"Vulindlela" ("Clear the path" or "Make way").
[…]
Produced 21 March 2011
Last Updated 26 May 2023
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