South African music has a rich history. Think of Miriam Makeba, Africa’s first superstar, and of Hugh Masekela, who followed Makeba from the country in 1960. Together, long before the term ”world music” had been coined, they gave Western audiences their first taste of township styles and showed that musicians could play a major political role. Think of Ladysmith Black Mambazo and the boost African music received when they appeared on Paul Simon’s Graceland in 1985, and of the Mahotella Queens, who sang at the House of Commons earlier this week.
But these are long-established artists: where is the new South African music? New local styles have come and gone, but only the veterans have enjoyed continued international success — and Hilda Tloubatla says she knows why. Sitting in her London hotel room, the leader of the Mahotella Queens accuses the younger South African singers of abandoning their tradition. ”They listen strictly to American music and not our own music,” she says. ”Everything they are doing is American, and that’s why they won’t make it.”
But hasn’t South Africa always looked to America? After all, the young Masekela was fascinated by the American jazz scene, just as the Queens themselves mixed traditional styles with the influence of American R&B, and used electric guitars? Maybe, but in the apartheid era, says Tloubatla, musicians never forgot their heritage ”because you had to stay an African, and be black, and never think of being white. But now the young musicians are doing their own style. They have taken too much from American brands.”
World music, however, thrives on fusion and the introduction of new influences, from reggae to hip-hop, so there has to be an explanation why the young Senegalese hip-hop band Daara J, or the Ivory Coast reggae singer Tiken Jah Fakoly should succeed outside Africa while their South African equivalents are struggling.
According to Ian Ashbridge, who runs the Queens’ United Kingdom label, Wrasse, ”Daara J have done well because they are rooted in the Senegalese griot tradition, and Tiken Jah is rooted in West Africa. The stuff that we’re sent from South Africa is not rooted in tradition. It’s an interpretation of someone else’s. The reason things catch people’s interest is that they are representative of a culture, and South African material is not representative, so doesn’t have any resonance.”
The new generation takes a different view. Jazz singer Simphiwe Dana says her predecessors are an obstacle as much as an inspiration: ”We are not being given a chance because the world is satisfied with the old guys.”
But the old guys will not be in the way for much longer — Masekela is 67 and Makeba is 74. It will then be up to the youth to prove they can take their chance. — Â