Gwen Ansell
THE recent commemoration of Enoch Sontonga was long overdue. One hopes it isn’t too long before recognition comes to our great living composers – Mzilikazi Khumalo, for example.
His Ushaka – on once only at the Durban City Hall on Thursday October 17 – plays with received notions about culture and appropriation. It sets praise poetry against choral singing and swings choir and soloists to and away from traditional African mode.
And it works. The quality of the voices is crucial, and the soloists, plus the 200 voices of four African choirs, provide soaring, moving sounds plus sharp diction.
More inspiring than the sound, though, is the occasion: a South African orchestra playing something new and indigenous that questions the ownership of musical forms; the choirs stretching on something more musically challenging than hymns. Why doesn’t it happen more often?