LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO

➣ from the Zulu for “walk softly”. “It’s the music we use for traditional dances,” he explains. “When people left their homes to work in mines they would sing because they were missing their families. In our culture, singing is not complete unless you are dancing, and we had a stomping dance.”

Behind him, Sibongiseni demonstrates, shuffling across the room, his feet hitting the floor noisily as he goes.

“The guards who policed the miners would tell them to stop,” continues Mazibuko, “so they started to dance on their tiptoes instead.”

N THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20th century, Zulu a cappella music was all the rage in South Africa. Solomon Linda’s song Mbube (The Lion) would sweep the world twice, first as Wimoweh, then as The Lion Sleeps Tonight. The mine companies that plundered South Africa’s mineral riches – gold, diamonds, coal, platinum, plutonium, chromium – organised singing competitions across the country with considerable status afforded triumphant choirs. Back in the townships, young Joseph Shabalala was listening intently. He’d been raised on a white-owned farm in the 1940s and worked as a waiter in Ladysmith. Mazibuko remembers Shabalala telling him that this music was good, but that something was missing: “He was asking us what we could do to make it better.”

The legend of LBM says the answer came to Shabalala in a series of dreams that lasted six months in 1964. “He had the same dream every night. But that’s where he got the idea for our music. What he dreamt was perfect. The harmonies… the dancing in time to the music… he learnt all these things from his dream.”

With Shabalala writing their material and drilling them until their dancing was precise, LBM crushed all-comers in the isicathamiya contests. With South Africa’s racist pass laws denying them free movement, however, life on the road was precarious for young black men supposed to remain in designated, racially segregated areas.

“We had gone to Johannesburg to perform on a Friday night in 1973,” remembers Mazibuko, “and we were supposed to drive home afterwards for work, knowing the police would stop us hoping we didn’t have permission to travel between cities. But there was a gas shortage and the petrol stations had to close at 6pm on Friday and not open until 6am on Monday. We were stuck in Johannesburg. And if the police found you walking the street you had to produce your ID, and if you were not registered as working with a local company they would take you to the police station. If you couldn’t pay the fine you would be jailed for a month. We were all fired from our jobs that weekend.”

After that disastrous show, the band split: seven decided to find proper jobs, five remained and new singers were recruited. But as one door closed… In 1973, LBM recorded a session for Radio Zulu, their songs – full of positive messages but apolitical – caused a sensation, swamping the network’s mailroom, switchboard and foyer with requests for more. Overcoming his boss’s belief that isicathamiya wouldn’t sell, West Nkosi, a talent scout with the Gallo label, recorded an LP, Amabutho. On advance sales alone it became the country’s first gold LP. Mazibuko remembers the Thursday it was released: “And we were called back into the studio on Friday to record more songs.”

HE 1970s BELONGED TO LADYSMITH: every LP went gold, they played all over southern Africa: in Lesotho, Botswana, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Swaziland (now Eswatini), where 65,000 packed a stadium and Mazibuko remembers their surprise at the number of white faces in the crowd in that apartheid-free country. “We had white fans at home, but they had to hide in the balcony at concerts. We sang at a white people’s wedding once and afterwards somebody called the police while we were eating and we had to run.” By the 1980s, though, isicathamiya’s popularity was fading. Enter Paul Simon. Stung by the reception to his 1983 LP Hearts And Bones and at a low ebb, he had travelled to Johannesburg to see if recording with local musicians could re-ignite his creative spark. It did, but

(Motella, 1973) Certified gold (25,000 sales) on release, LBM’s debut shows Joseph Shabalala had the formula in place from the start – the extra bass voices giving them more depth than their peers. Hat tip to producer West Nkosi, a township jive star in his own right who also recorded Mahlathini And The Mahotella Queens.

(Warner Bros, 1987) The first of a trio recorded for Warner Bros to capitalise on the success of Graceland and arguably the pick of all their studio albums. Shabalala returned to songs they had already recorded, but Paul Simon’s production takes tracks like Hello My Baby and Rain, Rain, Beautiful Rain up a notch.

(Polygram, 1998) Your one-stopshop best-of. Though it favours their glossier, post-Graceland recordings, the production lets you get right inside those harmonies. Released on the back of a Heinz commercial that used the title track, it sold a million in Britain – both album and single got to Number 2.

(Ladysmith Black Mambazo, 2014) Fifty years on from Joseph Shabalala’s dream, LBM collaborated with British classical composer Ella Spira to create a stage show that brought music, dance and song together. Though most of the classic line-up had departed, here was proof of the group’s continuing potency.