by R. Pikser

Joseph Shabalala, the founder and director of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, like many young South African men of his generation in the 1950s, left his home to find work in the city.  In his case, his home was a town named Ladysmith and the city was Durban.  After work, and especially on Saturday nights, after their six day work week, these migrant workers came together to entertain themselves, to express their longing for home, their prowess at work, and to compete in a singing style called isicathamiya.  The group that Mr. Shabalala’s organized was so powerful that they earned the name “black” because they were as strong as the strongest farm animal, the black ox, and because, like mambazo, an axe, they chopped down their competition.  Mr. Shabalala, now in his 70s, no longer tours with the group.  Winners of many awards, including three recent Grammys, his four sons, one grandson, and four others keep the tradition going, complete with the soft, cat-like steps that give the musical form its name, from the Zulu root,-cathama, walking lightly but stealthily.

The performers’ cat-like stalking seems so relaxed, so easy, that you can imagine just getting up and joining in, until they softly start to kick their legs high enough to touch their hands, or easily crouch down to the ground, then jump into the air shoulder high, pulling their legs up beneath them.  The dancing is set off by the performers’ black pants and white shoes, so that every leg gesture catches the eye.  Like all good performers, they seem to enjoy what they are doing, and each performer adds his own little variation to the choreography, which progresses in complexity as the show progresses, creating an increase in energy for them and for us.  These men are professionals.

But it is not interesting the background of the group, nor wonderful the dancing, nor the consummate showmanship, nor even the infectiousness of the music which makes the live performance of Ladysmith Black Mambazo transformative on a visceral level.  That is due to the nature of the sound.  Isicathamiya has, by tradition, a preponderance of basses and the voices are used to create a sort of drum effect that makes one want to dance.  The big difference between this music and others, though, is where the voices resonate, which is someplace towards the back of the throat.  That resonance carries out into the auditorium and into the very bones of one’s skeleton.  No recording, no U-tube selection or television appearance can recreate that vibration.  This is the magic of performance to the nth degree.  Additionally, these performers sing a message of peace and harmony, of all of us being brothers and sisters.  They say their mission is to bring world peace through their music.  One can believe it.  When one of the singers came forward and thanked the audience for coming, it seemed incredible that these artists in the highest sense of the word, those who transform us, should tread the same earth as we, much less thank us for our presence.  We are the ones who must be honored by their work.

January 31^st 2015
Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts -
New York, NY
Tickets $