Shiyani Ngcobo Downloads

Shiyani Ngcobo and maskanda Shiyani Ngcobo has been a maskanda musician for more than thirty years. The winner of maskanda competitions and a dedicated teacher, he has earned a reputation within South Africa as something of a maskanda guru. Maskanda was born of the Zulu experience of labour migrancy at the turn of the twentieth century. As a musical form, it is recognized by the instrumental...
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Shiyani Ngcobo and maskanda Shiyani Ngcobo has been a maskanda musician for more than thirty years. The winner of maskanda competitions and a dedicated teacher, he has earned a reputation within South Africa as something of a maskanda guru. Maskanda was born of the Zulu experience of labour migrancy at the turn of the twentieth century. As a musical form, it is recognized by the instrumental flourish that sets the tone at the beginning of each song, by the ‘picking style’ of guitar playing, and by the rapidly spoken sections of Zulu praise poetry (izibongo). But maskanda is more than a set of formal procedures; it is cherished as a practice that is firmly rooted in Zulu experience. From its very beginnings, maskanda has been self-consciously stamped with tones and textures that are strongly reminiscent of older, pre-colonial musical practices. In the early decades of the twentieth century, migrant workers recalled the comfort of their rural homes by using the sounds and styles they associated with the life they had left behind, singing of their new experiences in the city. Shiyani Ngcobo was born in 1953 in Umzinto, on KwaZulu-Natal’s south coast. The exodus of people into the migrant labour force had already significantly eroded community life at Umzinto, and he remembers his childhood as being a harsh struggle with poverty and the insecurity of family and neighbours always ‘on the move’. Like the early maskandi, Shiyani also finds solace in a sonic space, and it is through music, rather than through any concrete lived experience, that he has forged a sense of belonging. In his youth, Shiyani was exposed to a number of different musical styles, but it was maskanda that captured his imagination, and he begged his older brother Khetuwise to show him how to make his first igogogo (guitar made from a five-litre oil can) and to teach him the song ‘Sevelina’. Little did Khetuwise realize just how much maskanda would direct the course of his brother’s life. Perhaps it was maskanda’s textured shifting between different moments in time that resonated with Shiyani’s own unsettled experience, or maybe it was the liberating effect of speaking his mind with the impunity afforded a musician that appealed to the young Shiyani Ngcobo. Whatever the reason for the initial attraction, Shiyani has remained true to the aesthetic of early maskanda, while at the same time nurturing his own individual take on this musical practice. Maskanda is categorized into different styles, differentiated according to the rhythms of different dance patterns. Each set of dance patterns is associated with a particular regional community and named accordingly – for example, the style associated with the people from the south coast is called isishameni. Ordinarily, maskanda musicians prefer to play exclusively in one style in order to demonstrate their loyalty to the community into which they were born. However, Shiyani Ngcobo’s music is a mixture of the rhythmic patterns associated with the different maskanda styles, and it is in this regard that his music differs quite significantly from the maskanda that has been punted commercially in South Africa. Shiyani Ngcobo’s prolific repertoire gives voice to the dilemmas, trials and dreams of a generation of South Africans who carry the full weight of the apartheid legacy without falling prey to the stereotypes upon which apartheid traded. Kathryn Olsen Producer’s Notes My earliest route into African music came – as a teenager – through hearing recordings of the Congolese acoustic guitarist/singer Mwenda Jean Bosco, and since that time I have always felt the magnetic pull of the assured African acoustic. I remember – it must be twenty-eight years ago – visiting the ethnomusicologist/Bosco-ologist David Rycroft to find out more about MJB. He showed us a home movie from South Africa that caught glimpses of Zulu guitar and fiddle in the streets of Jo’burg. These were my first maskanda glimpses. Time and world music runs on, and the opportunities to hear African music increase. I come across the word ‘maskanda’. A-ha! I think; that’s what I’ve been hearing. Run forward to summer 2000, and the Rain Forest World Music Festival in Sarawak, Malaysia. Zulus in Sarawak: so this is world music! Onstage is Shiyani Ngcobo and his fiddling partner. My eyes and ears open. I see, I like. I make note: must try to make a record with this person. The happy opportunity came in 2002. Thanks to Angela Impey (who was with Shiyani in Sarawak) and Kathryn Olsen (who is managing him now), we meet up again, and record some direct-to-DAT demos in Kathryn’s front room – Shiyani and his super-supportive bass buddy Aaron Meyiwa for four songs, and two more with Shiyani and his igogogo petrol-can guitar. These demos ended up as a BBC Radio 3 Andy Kershaw session, and a key to the recording that you now have in your hands. Maskanda is traditionally a solo occupation, a one-person multi-voiced skill, which you can hear on several of Shiyani’s tracks here. But over the years – driven mainly by the commercial needs of the record industry, and the competitive push to hold its own against other local styles – maskanda has moved from being the music of a kind of dynamic acoustic wandering lone-wolf troubadour to that of a larger ensemble, streamlined and formula-ed by the big studios and a local/pop aesthetic. Drums and rhythm groove programming, electric guitars and bass and more. Nothing wrong with that, if in the right hands, only to say that this reduces the opportunities for an artist such as Shiyani to find a way forward in this milieu. The irony rings out (as has been noted by several maskanda scholars): at base, maskanda is a solo performance that can only be marketed on record as a group sound. So where does that leave us with Shiyani? Here the producer scratches his head. Do we make an album of solo songs, aiming for some kind of ideal, despite the fact that Shiyani has been working in a duet or trio for ages? Or do we go for this full-on ampli-maskanda, despite its acoustic heart? And what about the world music listeners (possibly the listeners to this album, to whom isiZulu is at best a learnt language), who have to travel music first, lyrics later? Try to bring out Shiyani’s range and depth, without persuading him to be a different kind of Shiyani… Step forward Shiyani. Next time I meet him, a few months on, he’s rehearsing again, once more with Aaron, and also now with a fiddler (Thulasizwe Ndlangisa), as well as a concertina squashbox player. In a garage in Isipingo Hills, in a township area in Durban’s peri-urban sprawl. It’s a garage band! Everything through one amplifier, jets en route to somewhere flying and growling overhead, overloading our recording attempts. Fantastic – it’s a band sound, but not with the template-bound, ungiving dimensions of production-line programming. (Dear creative programmers out there, I’m not dissing you; you’re artists too. We know what we’re discussing here.) I’d like to make a plea for a new concept – elastic precision. It’s what Shiyani has, and what so many musicians have: an absolutely determined (in both senses of the word) and precise groove, with infinite, fractal variants that relate to what comes before and after, and yet may not always fit on the rigid grid of a sequencer with too much ease. But don’t worry, for he knows what he is doing! Perfection may be infinitely seductive, but it’s the flaws and differences that make the beauty; hence the ‘humanize/feel’ controls on computer-based groove programs. Viva Elastic! Great, we’re going to record a combo! We wonder if singing ladies are an option (there is a strong female tradition in maskanda, too), and Kathryn mentions a fine and characterful singer, Phathekile Lukhozi. Might there be a duet possibility? One track, for a little extra flavour? The question lingers on, I go back to UK, and return in July for the actual recording of the album. That point has arrived. The duet? Oh yes, yes, we’re past that idea now; Phathekile has become a regular singing member of the group. The elements are there – the musicians, the producer, the budget, the studio, featuring Mr David Birch… and the songs. Shiyani has a lot of songs. They pour out of him, endlessly combining the deep traditional Zulu proverbs and melody modules with new social comment and a robust ear. The producer’s usual problem: not enough repertoire. This is the other problem: too much repertoire. Rehearse, refine, save it for the next album. The producer shuffles around wincing, having twisted his back reaching for a pencil (the punishment of old-style analogue literacy), and makes a few suggestions. Try a break-down here, a bass-stomp there, you’re rocking by four minutes, so let’s hit, git and split. Don’t need any more playing in that one…Variants and landmarks to emphasize the character of each piece. That’s the theory, anyway. Studio time – Tropical Sweat Studios, underneath the Birch family home in Cherry Avenue. We have rehearsed. We have started. We have a week. No, we didn’t use any preprogrammed grooves (apart from Shiyani’s own elastic precision), but we still want some boom and clack on the track. You’ll hear the traditional Zulu isigubhu drum, brought in from the ingoma dance tradition. A drum machine? That tap-tap that pops through on some of the tracks – that’s Shiyani’s foot. ‘Dave, let’s get a mike on Shiyani’s foot.’ Things start to be disclosed: Aaron and Shiyani reveal a fine set of bass voices. Phathekile becomes the whistle queen. New boy Thulasizwe takes to the headphones as if he’s a hardened old studio sweat. Mr Msawakhe Mkhize, familiar name ‘Monkey Face’, arrives with concertina. Everyone does no-fuss overdubs. ‘Ngisizeni’, which started life as a stomper, is transformed into the album’s ‘slow’. Things relax: the old starter-pistol of ‘Rolling…!’ is replaced with ‘When you are ready, Shiyani, please start.’ ‘Ah, OK.’ Things start to relax more: Shiyani is warming up on the garden-porch sofa with his igogogo, the gang is hanging round having outdoor tea and biscuits. Cups chink, birds squawk, laundry flaps. Sounds wonderful. ‘Dave – can we run some mikes into the garden, please?’ ‘Ngeke Lithuthuke’ and ‘Sevelina’ are recorded this way – stereo, alfresco, al sofa. We’ll try ‘Izinyembezi’ that way, as well – a flock of hadedas (those squawking birds) join in at the front (we like that), and we do a bass vocal overdub on the porch, too. Now the garden itself becomes more appealing as a recording space. We go for ‘iJadu’ – all four around the main microphone, Shiyani playing a surprise percussion egg, and another microphone on the grass itself for the stomping. Then Phathekile for her overdub: ‘Dave, can we run some headphones all the way out into the garden?’ This is a good moment. It unlocks the album in a way, and helps us to find a more informal, natural, relaxed – dare I say ‘folky’ – direction to the recordings that we are making. Looking for the performance, not just the layering. And a great, unplanned performance moment: Aaron detunes an acoustic guitar’s bottom four strings to a baritone range and starts to play the bassline (on this newly baritoned guitar) to ‘Isithothobala’ along with Shiyani as they are catching the air outside. The effect is as if we are hearing a giant four-handed, two-necked expanded guitar. We catch the moment with the stereo microphone set-up. Guitarists please note: Shiyani’s preferred tuning is as the conventional guitar, but with the highest string (the top E) tuned down to a D. That’s the tuning relationship rather than the actual concert pitch. Logan and I have a few mind-boggling transposition moments, as we see Shiyani tune the whole guitar up way above normal pitch, then put on a capo to make it even higher, while Aaron tunes the his bass’s strings down a semitone. Thulasizwe lowers the violin strings considerably, with his violin bridge moved much closer to the fingerboard to make the string-length shorter and the higher fingering positions more accessible. But they all end up in the same place together. The time is up. I think that we have everything. Well, we have everything that we have. Back to London and mixing time. Thank goodness for a computer-based recording medium: the master recordings are stored on CD-Rs. Crikey, I can remember trying to hand-carry reels of two-inch tape through bad-hat Customs and onto the plane. To Church Walk Studios and Rob Keyloch, mixmaster. That moment comes, that nervous wandering producer moment, that holiday-shells-on-the-beach moment. Will they still look as good at home, unsparkled by local waters? They are good. We put up the tracks, enjoying the music, the intricacy, drive and detail. How does Shiyani keep that relentless driving thumb-beat going when he is playing all of the other parts? We love his opening guitar flourishes – izihlabo – to each tune, a bravura announcement saying, ‘Here I am, here I come!’ We love the vocal harmonies, the bonding and swerving of voices together, Phatekhile’s ‘Oh yeah’ vocal corners. We dig Aaron’s bass-playing, the down-home positivity of Thulasizwe’s violin, the twang-tang of the igogogo. And, to finish, an unadorned acoustic guitar solo, ‘Kheta Eyakho’. In the middle of ‘Senzeni’, Phatekhile lets rip with her izibongo (self-praise commentary): ‘I am playing with Shiyani, the child of Ngcobo. Play your guitar Shiyani, one day we will be famous…!’ I agree, and hope that you do, too. Ben Mandelson 1 Yekanini (All Is Lost) 4:30 Shiyani: vox, acoustic guitar Phathekile: vox Aaron: vox, electric bass Thulasizwe: violin 2 Izangoma (The Diviner) 5:07 Shiyani: vox, acoustic guitars, foot, isigubhu drum Aaron: vox, electric bass Msawakhe Mkhize: concertina 3 uDadewethu (My Sister) 3:54 Shiyani: vox, acoustic guitar Phathekile: vox Aaron: vox 4 Senzeni (What Have We Done?) 5:08 Shiyani: vox, acoustic guitar, claps Phathekile: vox Aaron: vox, electric bass, claps Thulasizwe: claps 5 Sevelina 3:35 Shiyani: vox, igogogo 6 iJadu (Anthem For The Elders) 2:54 Shiyani: vox, shaker Phathekile: vox Aaron: vox Thulasizwe: vox 7 Izinyembezi (The Tears) 4:43 Shiyani: vox, acoustic guitar 8 Wayi Thathapi (Where Did You Get It From?) 4:25 Shiyani: vox, acoustic guitar Phathekile: vox, whistle Aaron: vox, electric bass Thulasizwe: violin 9 Ngeke Lithuthuke (We Are Not Developing) 3:00 Shiyani: vox, igogogo Aaron: vox 10 Ngisizeni (Can You Help Me?) 3:41 Shiyani: vox, acoustic guitars Phathekile: vox Aaron: vox, electric bass, claps, foot rattle Thulasizwe: claps 11 Isithembu (Polygamy) 5:57 Shiyani: vox, acoustic guitars Phathekile: vox Aaron: vox, electric bass Thulasizwe: violin 12 Akwehlanga Lungehlanga (What Has Happened To You Has Happened To Others) 3:51 Shiyani: vox, acoustic guitar, foot Phathekile: whistle Aaron: vox, electric bass Msawakhe Mkhize: concertina 13 Isithothobala (Those Stupid Ways) 4:38 Shiyani: vox, acoustic guitar Phathekile: vox Aaron: vox, acoustic guitar 14 Kheta Eyakho (Chose One For Yourself) 4:03 Shiyani: acoustic guitar solo Appearing on this album are: Shiyani Ngcobo Aaron Meyiwa Phathekile Lukhozi Thulasizwe Ndlangisa Msawakhe Mkhize Thanks to: Angela Impey, Logan Byrne, the Birch family, Angus Kerr, Bernhard for the loan of microphones, Andy Kershaw, Roger Armstrong, Nick Robbins, Peter Olsen and the music department at KwaZulu-Natal University, Lindokuhle Mpungose for help with translating, Phil Stanton, Sandra Alayón-Stanton and all at World Music Network All songs written and composed by Shiyani Ngcobo, except ‘Sevelina’ written and composed by Khetuwise Ngcobo and ‘iJadu’ written and composed by Phatekhile Lukhosi All tracks published by Riverboat UK Music, MCPS Produced by Ben Mandelson Recorded at Tropical Sweat Studios, Durban, RSA, by David Birch Mixed at Church Walk Studios, London, UK, by Rob Keyloch Mastered at Sound Mastering, London, UK, by Duncan Cowell Sleeve notes by Kathryn Olsen and Ben Mandelson Photographs courtesy of Anna Kemp and Ben Mandelson Design by Undertow, coordinated by Duncan Baker Shiyani Ngcobo booking and management: Kathryn Olsen Tel: +27 31 764 4108 / +27 31 260 1348 fax: +27 31 260 1048 mobile: +27 73 148 3976 email: olsenk1@nu.ac.za or kathrynolsen@law.co.za Further information on Shiyani Ngcobo, including translations of the lyrics of this album, can be found at www.worldmusic.net, where you can also listen to sound samples of all Introducing, World Music Network and Riverboat Records releases.
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