It had been quite a morning for Joseph Shabalala and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. They were in Amsterdam to record a track with a Dutch artist, a superstar in his own country but unknown beyond the borders of the Netherlands. Shabalala describes the experience as “very, very nice and easy”. It’s doubtful that any other artist would share this view.
Shabalala had written a new song especially for the occasion, a fact that he neglected to mention to the other members of the band until they arrived at the studio.”I don’t tell them,” he explains, rather enigmatically, “because I don’t want them to get frustrated.” But weren’t they frustrated when they discovered they had to learn and record a new song before lunch? Shabalala looks puzzled. “No, no, no,” he chuckles. “I can talk to them very nicely and they can catch it.” Shabalala (63) does talk very nicely. His speech shares some of the qualities of his remarkable singing voice — something he demonstrates by breaking into song. There is usually something embarrassing and self-indulgent about pop stars singing at you while you’re trying to interview them. When Shabalala does it, however, you just sit and gawp. His voice is high, quivering, mournful, heartbreakingly beautiful and weirdly distant. It sounds like it’s coming from somewhere far away. When he talks, his voice is hushed, rising and falling in soft cadences. It is gentle and lulling even when he discusses the events of the past 12 months.
Shabalala’s 2002 was bizarre and shocking. First, his daughter died of an Aids-related illness. Then his wife Nellie was murdered in front of him and his 42-year-old son Nkosinathi was arrested and accused of plotting his stepmother’s death. Nkosinathi is currently on trial for murder after he was accused of hiring a hit man. “I don’t know what happened,” says Shabalala. “Nobody knows. I think it was jealousy of her work. She was a heaven-maker … The way she contributed to other people, it makes me sleep very well.
“When I saw this man coming, he was like a sick person. I thought maybe he was hurrying to see me because I have the gift [of] laying hands. Then I heard the noise of the gun and I ran for him. I tried to grab him, but he ran away. The I went back to my wife. I heard her last breath and I said to her, ‘I love you.’
“When my daughter died I was not at home, I was on tour. She was sick. I remember I came to the doctor and the doctor told me they were going to wash her blood, but after that she passed away. She was sick. My wife was not sick. Just gone. Just gone.”
Surprisingly, Shabalala was back on stage days after his wife’s murder, performing first in Malaysia, then in London. “I wanted to,” says Shabalala. “All the time I was thinking, ‘Maybe I’m going to wake up’, but when we sing, the music gives me more power … When I’m on stage, I feel like she’s there. When I sing the song Hello My Dear, it is just like I’m greeting her.” Eyebrows were raised at his decision to marry a local charity worker six months later. “People are entitled to their own opinion. I did not see any reason to publicise that I was getting married. Everyone at church was surprised, but they were also very happy … In many ways she is like my late wife…”
There is a sense that Shabalala views recent events as a peculiar twist in a life of extraordinary incidents. He claims that Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s unique variation on traditional Zulu isicathamiya singing also came to him in a dream, while he was working as a mechanic in 1960s Durban. It took him four years to assemble a group capable of achieving the sound. At the time, Shabalala had no idea what a record contract was. Ladysmith Black Mambazo are presumably the only multi-platinum act in history to turn down their first recording session on the grounds that it might cost them their souls.
“People asked us to go and record in 1968,” says Shabalala. “We said, where? They said the radio station. At that time, we thought Satan was in the radio station. We thought the voices on the radio were the voices of people who had passed away. We were farm boys, we were afraid. We were suspecting these people want to take our voices while we are still alive!
“Then, in 1970 I applied again. And the producers got very happy. They were clapping because of my song.” By the early 1970s, their music had crossed over to a white audience, a remarkable feat in apartheid-era South Africa. Ten years later, they began performing in Europe and the United States. Famously, their collaboration with Paul Simon on the 1986 album Graceland took them to an enormous global audience.”That was the first time that a white man came to South Africa to visit us,” says Shabalala. “From that time to this, Paul Simon is my brother.”Almost 20 years on, Ladysmith Black Mambazo remain in a very uncommon position. They and the aged vocalists of Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club are the only artists to have crossed from world music to genuine global success.
Despite Damon Albarn’s recent efforts, world music is still seen as the province of the terminally worthy. Yet we make an exception for Ladysmith Black Mambazo. There is something undeniable about their sound, which penetrates musical isolationism. But there is also the faintly troubling sense that in the West their harmonies have become a kind of musical shorthand for the dignity of the oppressed. When a Western artist wants to add a touch of meaningful exoticism to their records, Shabalala invariably gets the call and Ladysmith have made guest appearances with such unlikely figures as Dolly Parton and Julia Fordham. Advertisers, too, have made the connection. The band’s popularity in Britain was revived by an advert for Heinz baked beans, but their music has also shifted soft drinks and computers.
Shabalala’s conversation strikes the faintest note of cynicism only once. When Ladysmith Black Mambazo first performed with Simon, he says, “we thought they clapped because they thought, ‘Oh, shame, these oppressed people are crying every day, let’s clap.'” For the most part, however, he claims the adverts and guest appearances all serve a greater purpose in promoting the Zulu culture — not to Western audiences, but to other Zulus.”When I first got the guys together, I said to them, our people are scattered, they [have] lost hope, we must take this sound somewhere and tell them. All the schools are teaching Zulu music now, and that only started after the big tour with Paul Simon. The children come back home after school and say they hear Black Mambazo and ask, ‘Is this our culture? This is beautiful, we listen to it at school’. Before, if they come back with books, what is the grandfather going to say? He doesn’t know anything about books.
“But now, he can tell them, it’s from this music, you find it in the wedding songs, in the Zulu dances. At last they have their culture.” He sighs. “I think I’m going to die in peace.” — Â