Mbaqanga Music Guide: Brief History of Mbaqanga

Mbaqanga, or township jive, is a genre of South African music that enjoyed popularity among urban-based listeners from the early 1960s to the 1970s. The genre is a hybrid of Western and South African jazz, specifically, big band jazz from America and the blues- and folk-influenced sounds of Zulu music, like malabi and kwela. Mbaqanga was upbeat township music enjoyed by Black and white South Africans in township areas like Soweto, despite the segregationist policies of apartheid.

Though mbaqanga’s appeal faded in the early 1980s, the genre did produce a few notable talents, such as Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens. It also provided such future international stars as Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, and Letta Mbulu with an entry into the music business. Mbaqanga music had a brief revival in the 1980s with the release of Paul Simon’s Grammy-winning Graceland album, which featured songs done in the mbaqanga style.

Mbaqanga dates back to the mid-twentieth century. Here is a brief overview of the genre’s evolution:

• Townships served as the setting for the genre’s birth. The history of mbaqanga began in the 1950s when an expanding urban population required the creation of townships, or settlements, adjacent to major cities like Johannesburg. There, Black South African musicians found new performing venues, primarily in shebeens, or illegal speakeasies. At the shebeens, musicians played a cross-pollination of American and traditional music on Western instruments in a jazz/R&B style resulting in a crowd-pleasing new sound called mbaqanga. Though its name was intended to demean the music’s crude arrangements and performances—in Zulu, the definition of “mbaqanga” is “dumpling”—it also instilled a sense of homegrown pride among its listeners and practitioners, who soon adopted the name for themselves.
• Bopape helps solidify the sound. Among the earliest mbaqanga musicians was the Makgona Tsohle Band, a jazz/R&B quintet who folded Zulu dance music into Stateside jazz. Rupert Bopape, head of EMI Records’ African music division, placed the band behind singer Simon “Mahlathini” Nkabinde and a female vocal trio called the Mahotella Queens, solidifying the sound of mbaqanga: danceable rhythms anchored by an emotive male lead. Nkabinde, nicknamed the “Lion of Soweto” for his powerful vocals, helped define the signature “groaner” delivery of mbaqanga singers and female backing harmonies. This new form, also known as vocal mbaqanga or simanje-manje, was soon adopted by other musicians, including Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Sipo Mchunu, and Johnny Clegg’s Juluka, the first apartheid-era band to feature Black and white musicians.
• All-male vocal arrangements become prevalent. The 1970s saw the vocal mbaqanga sound conform to an all-male vocal arrangement called mbaqanga-soul, which found groups like the Groovy Brothers and their spin-off act The Soul Brothers echoing the style of R&B vocal groups of the period. However, the end of the decade saw mbaqanga supplanted by Western pop music and disco and a more polished South African style of Afro-dance music called bubblegum.
• Mbaqanga receives global attention. Paul Simon’s Graceland album brought global attention to mbaqanga, and many of its original performers returned to the spotlight in the 1980s, some of whom, like Nkabinde and the Mahotella Queens, resumed touring and recording. Their music remains a nostalgic favorite among listeners in South Africa, while world music compilations and studies like Louise Meintjes’s 2003 book Sound of Africa! Making Music Zulu in a South African Studio preserved their legacies.

There are several defining characteristics of mbaqanga, including:

1. 1. Jazz-inspired instrument selection: Unlike marabi or kwela, which utilized homegrown instruments like pedal organs and pennywhistles, mbaqanga employed Western instruments to reproduce the American jazz and soul that influenced it. Most mbaqanga groups featured saxophone, acoustic guitars, double basses, drums, piano, and accordions.
2. 2. Upbeat lyrics: Mbaqanga songs were invariably upbeat, positive numbers that encouraged South African listeners to dance and forget their troubles. Mbaqanga emphasized joy and personal freedom, even if it was in short supply in the everyday world. In doing so, mbaqanga offered audiences an escape from their everyday lives, even if for just the length of a song.
3. 3. Big band elements: Mbaqanga has been compared to American big band music of the 1940s, especially regarding its swinging rhythm and the lush vocal harmonies of its lead—who invariably sang in a basso tone—and backing singers. Elements of gospel music can also be heard in its vocal and instrumental arrangements, much like how gospel has a strong presence in American vocal R&B.

There are several notable mbaqanga artists in South African music history, including:

1. 1. Dark City Sisters: Like Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens, the female vocal group Dark City Sisters was brought together by producer Rupert Bopape in 1958. The group took its name from the members’ hometown of Alexandria Township, nicknamed “Dark City” for its lack of public streetlights. Dark City Sisters recorded several hit singles in the 1960s. They were invariably joined by male vocalist Aaron “Big Voice Jack” Lerole or Simon “Mahlathini” Nkabinde in the style of traditional mbaqanga vocal arrangements. The group dissolved in 1971, but new lineups featuring the sole original member, Joyce Mogatusi, performed regularly from the mid-1970s until she died in 2012.
2. 2. Makgona Tsohle Band: Bopape also organized a quintet of domestic workers into the pioneering mbaqanga group known as the Makgona Tsohle Band. They backed Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens on their popular recordings and live performances in South Africa and neighboring countries while also serving as a house band for Bopape’s label, the Mavuthela Music Company. The band broke up in the 1970s to pursue producing and songwriting but reunited in 1983 to star in a South African TV comedy and resumed recording and touring until the late 1990s when the deaths of three founding members ended their comeback.
3. 3. Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens: The gruff-voice Simon “Mahlathini” Nkabinde and the female vocal trio the Mahotella Queens were key architects in the development of vocal mbaqanga music. They recorded hundreds of tracks throughout their career, which reached from the early 1960s to their dissolution in the early 1970s and subsequent reunion from the 1980s to late ‘90s. The quartet—who wore traditional Zulu costumes on stage—ended with Mahlathini’s death in 1999, but iterations of the original Queens lineup have continued performing.
4. 4. Soul Brothers: Forged from the ashes of another mbaqanga group, the Groovy Boys, Soul Brothers have recorded a staggering amount of albums over their four-decade career, making them one of the longest-running mbaqanga groups. As their moniker suggests, the Soul Brothers’ sound was influenced by American R&B of the 1970s, which helped earn several hits on the South African charts in 1976. Personnel changes spurred the remaining members to adopt a determined schedule of constant touring and album releases; in 1991 alone, they released 13 new studio records and compilations. Soul Brothers have remained true to their policy of annual record releases while also touring the world, including stops in Europe and the United States.

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