THE IMAGING OF ZULU
By Siemon Allen
Recently I was invited to participate in a round table on the theme of "Global Zulu" for the 16th triennial ACASA conference hosted by the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. Organized by Gary van Wyk and Lisa Brittan, the presentation was a precursor to their curatorial work around an exhibition based on the same theme. Other participants on the round table included Hlonipa Mokoena (Columbia University), Sandra Klopper (University of Cape Town), Dingani Mthethwa (Virginia Commonwealth University) and Catherine Elliot (University of East Anglia / British Museum). Gary had invited me to talk about the use of Zulu iconography on record covers but I chose to take a slightly broader approach by including earlier material. My text and images presented at the conference follow below:
I came to this round table not as a specialist on Zulu Culture but rather as an artist who for the last 15 years has been working on a series of projects based around the theme of
Imaging South Africa. For these projects I collect, archive and display various artifacts, specifically those that have left the country and exist in the wider world, and ones that, for better or worse, construct images of South Africa. The vast majority of these artifacts are paper ephemera such as stamps, trading cards, postcards, record covers, and so on. Today I will focus on one aspect of that constructed South African image — Zulu culture — and how it has been imaged in the West.
The first written accounts of Zulu cultural life seen through Western eyes were made by explorers Nathaniel Isaacs and Allen Francis Gardiner in two separate books both published in England in 1836 and illustrated with elaborate lithograph plates. These were the first ‘images’ that a reading public in England would have had of the Zulu and their accounts certainly would define the popular conception (or mis-conception) of this distant culture. This would be an image, rightly or wrongly, from which historians over the next 150 years, would draw. More recent findings have led some researchers to question their often problematic depictions of the Zulu as exaggerated; motivated by commercial desires to promote the annexation of the region by the British Crown.
1
A letter, discovered in 1941, written by Nathanial Isaacs to Henry Fynn in which he gives publishing advice to Fynn, states: “
Make them [the Zulu kings]
out as bloodthirsty as you can, and describe the frivolous crimes people lose their lives for. It all tends to swell up the work and make it interesting.”
2 Fynn was one of the first explorers to arrive at Port Natal and had lived amongst the Zulu for some years documenting his experience in a diary. Fynn was looking to publish his diary in London when Isaacs wrote to him.
It is from Isaacs that we have the first, and one of the few, images of King Shaka, shown here in “battle-dress”.
Isaacs book was subsequently reviewed in the British weekly publication
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction3 in October 1836, which reprinted the now famous image of Shaka on its cover. Quoted in the review were selected texts from Isaacs’ account, including an initial meeting with Shaka:
4
“
… as usual we paid the king an early visit. We now expressed a wish to see him in his war dress; he immediately retired, and in a short time returned attired: his dress consists of monkeys’ skins, in three folds from his waist to the knee, from which two white cows tails are suspended as well as from each arm; round his head is a neat band of fur stuffed, in front of which is placed a tall feather, and on each side a variegated plume. He advanced with his shield, an oval about four feet in length, and an umconto, or spear, when his warriors commenced a war-song, and he began his maneuvers.”
5
What, for me, is significant about this account is that Shaka does not choose to greet his guests dressed in his warrior attire (for obvious reasons, he was not at battle.) But rather it is the visitors, the Westerners, who desire to see him dressed as such.
This is then how Isaacs chooses to represent Shaka in the lithographs to the British public and it is this image of the male Zulu as warrior that is then imprinted on the imagination and continuously re-imaged in the West.
Though Shaka does not at first appear in his military dress for the visitors, in complying to their request he becomes a kind of participant in this projection of the warrior image for his so-called ‘other’. His performance as the warrior is an assertion of cultural pride and a legitimate affirmation of Zulu identity. Seen through Western eyes, though, this same action becomes a spectacle and a form of exoticism.
Thus comes into play a complex dance of “performing Zulu” for Western audiences, where actions and objects of significant cultural pride — the clothing; the weapons, such as the assegai and knobkerrie, the
isihlangu or battle shield — are used by Westerners as signs to reinforce early stereotypes of the Zulu as “warlike and savage”.
Print was not the only medium to contribute to these problematic Western images of the Zulu in the 19th century. Further examples of Zulu culture as spectacle are discussed in Bernth Lindfors book,
Africans on Stage, where, in the summer of 1853, A.T. and C. Caldecott brought thirteen Zulus by ship to London “
for the purpose of exhibiting them to the British public.”
6 The show included elaborate performances by the men in traditional warrior dress and was reported as one of the most popular shows in London at the time. Similarly, in 1879, William Hunt, also known as Farini, mounted shows concurrent with the Anglo-Zulu War of Zulu warriors performing in London.
7
The Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, like no other event before it, brought British interests in Zululand, to the front pages of the international press. The various Zulu victories against the world’s then leading imperial army were often featured in papers like
The New York Times. An article on February 12th after the battle of Isandlwana reads: “
The news of the defeat caused a sensation throughout London. The demand for newspapers at all the suburban stations was greater than since the outbreak of the Franco-German War.”
8 Another article from July 25th covers the eventual Zulu defeat at the battle of Ulundi and discusses possible outcomes for then Zulu King Cetshwayo.
9
An interesting example of the extent to which the Zulu war caught the international attention is seen in this cigarette card series celebrating Australia’s preeminent annual horse race: the Melbourne Cup. The 1881 winner was a black colt named Zulu, here not only referencing the war but also signifying “blackness”.
After his defeat, King Cetshwayo, was captured and sent into exile at the Cape. In 1882 he petitioned Queen Victoria for an audience and was permitted to travel to London where he requested to be reinstated as Zulu King. Images from the time include Cetshwayo posing in traditional dress and subsequently photographed in Western attire while visiting London in 1882. In addition Queen Victoria offered to have his official portrait painted in “national dress”.
The image on the left shows Cetshwayo posing for a portrait in traditional attire taken probably around 1875. Interestingly he is posed in front of what appears to be a large canvas tarpaulin and seated on a Victorian wooden chair. This is also how he appears to be dressed in images showing him and his entourage aboard the ship
Natal which took him into exile to Cape Town.
10 The centre photograph taken by Alexander Bassano in 1882, while Cetshwayo was visiting London, shows him in Western clothing. While in London, Queen Victoria also offered her painter, Carl Sohn, to paint his official portrait in “national dress”. The painting was eventually sent on permanent loan by King George VI to the Old Town House in Durban.
11 Today it is part of the Local History Museum collection.
Cetshwayo also became the subject of the British satirical weekly magazine
Punch. In this cartoon he is shown with a female entourage meeting British high society, in what I am assuming is a fictional account as the image appears to be dated from 1879, well before his 1882 visit.
Below Cetshwayo is depicted on a cigarette card issued ten years after the Anglo-Zulu war in 1889. The card comes from W.S. Kimball & Company’s crudely titled series
Savage and Semi-Barbarous Chiefs and Rulers.
Allen & Ginter of Richmond, Virginia was one of the first cigarette companies to insert printed cards into their tobacco products as a way to stiffen the packaging and serve as a marketing device. Many subjects ranged from the quasi-educational to blatant propaganda. This set from 1887 explored the
Arms of all Nations and included an image of a Zulu warrior with Assegai situated interestingly with other weapons from across the globe.
Some cards like this 1929 Churchman series titled
Warriors of all Nations would include a paragraph of information on the back contextualizing, in part, the image on the front. Other cards like the 1888 Kinney Tobacco Company
Military Series show a "Zulu Chief" erroneously as a child.
This Singer Sewing Machine trade card below dates from the 1890s. Trade cards were exchanged in social circles as a means of advertising businesses or products and first became popular in London in the 17th century. In many ways they are the pre-cursor to the modern day business card. This particular card shows a Zulu woman making an article of clothing on a sewing machine surrounded by her family. The text on the back suggests that it is the Singer Company that is literally bringing “civilization” through Western clothing to Zululand.
The turn of the century saw an explosion of postcards. Short messages could be sent at cheaper rates than letters. Visitors in foreign countries, in this way, would communicate with friends or loved-ones thereby disseminating mass produced “exotic” images across the globe. South Africa was no exception.
Early postcards however showed very little of the rapid industrialization of contemporary African life under colonial rule. Images of the Zulu, rather, referenced a pre-colonial ideal with thematic stereotypes that perpetuated, for the Western viewer, a romantic image of “native” life.
A number of companies produced postcards in South Africa in the early 1900s but none were as prolific as the Sallo Epstein Company of Durban.
12 These two postcards below are examples from Epstein's studio that show what appears to be Zulu musicians with a range of traditional and Western instruments including the stringed bow or
umakweyana, a concertina and a mouth organ. The cancellation stamp on the rear of the right hand card dates it from January 28th, 1906. Interestingly, this image was also used on the cover of the compilation CD
Squashbox: Le Concertina Zoulou et Sotho en Afrique Du Sud 1930-1965 issued in France on Silex Memoire in 1993.
The postcard also presented a new kind of Zulu image: the rickshaw or
amalitha — introduced to Natal from Japan in 1893. The Zulu rickshaw is a particular adaptation of the Japanese rickshaw (meaning human power vehicle) which was probably developed in Japan around 1869. By 1904 there were over 2000 registered rickshaw pullers in Durban.
Though rickshaws were quite clearly the result of problematic colonial labour dynamics, the practice did foster a uniquely Zulu and vibrant sub-culture. The horns in the headdress, for example, are symbolic of the strength of the bull.
13
Images of the Zulu rickshaw began to appear in international advertisements for travel to South Africa, reinforcing colonial fantasies for Western consumers. This 1935 US Time magazine advertises “
A Zulu Warrior pulled my rickshaw” thus blurring and equating the rickshaw puller and Zulu warrior. The rickshaw is used again in a 1939 US Fortune Magazine advertisement seen below the Time magazine example.
The above image shows an earlier travel advertisement from Science magazine in the 1920s with a diagram of a Zulu warrior in “War Panoply”.
IMAGES IN THE RECORDING INDUSTRY
The earliest recordings of Zulu music date back to 1912 when the UK-based Gramophone Company sent a portable recording unit to South Africa and issued records on their Zonophone label. These included tracks by Impi To Sindiso, H. Selby Msimang, P. Mbonambi and J. Vilakazi.
14 But field recordings were not the greatest quality and artists were frequently brought by boat to the recording studios in England.
Interestingly the first substantial body of Zulu recordings were made in London by
James Stuart, a white, fluent Zulu linguist who was born in Pietermaritzburg in 1868. Stuart recorded at least 62 tracks, beginning in April 1927, that were primarily spoken word praise songs — or
izibongo — dedicated to leaders like Shaka and Dingane. Of note Stuart was also one of the principles behind the eventual publication of Henry Fynn’s diary mentioned earlier. Much of Stuart's research is housed today at the Killie Campbell Africana Library in Durban. Stuart’s recording sessions were followed with those by
Simon Sibiya and John Matthews Ngwane in 1929.
15
But perhaps the most famous and successful Zulu recordings from this period come from the 1930 London sessions by Reuben T. Caluza’s Double Quartet. As Veit Erlmann so intricately reveals in his book
African Stars, Caluza was South Africa’s first black ragtime composer and with his group recorded over 150 tracks for EMI. Caluza had been educated at John Dube’s Ohlange Institute and became a choral conductor and teacher there in 1915. In 1934 he graduated from the Hampton Institute in Virginia, USA followed by Columbia University before returning to South Africa to head the newly formed School of Music at Adams College outside Durban.
16
With a growing resurgence in ethnic pride amongst the black elite, teachers, mostly alumni from Adams College, formed in 1929 “The Lucky Stars”, a vaudeville performance troupe that employed Zulu ethnic traditions and iconography in their shows.
The image above is sourced from Veit Erlmann's
African Stars and in the book he discusses the group and the times:
"The Lucky Stars gloried in “scenes of native domestic life with a realism which would be otherwise unobtainable. […]
And although elite critics such as Herbert Dhlomo mocked the show as “exotic crudités,” Durban working-class audiences “perceived finer shades of relevant ethical significance, and relished the skillful dramatization of double-barreled purpose in each play. […]
If the acceptance of ethnic traditions among black cultural leaders before the war and during much of the 1920s was never more than half-hearted, the 1930s saw significant changes in black attitudes towards tradition and ethnicity. Thus in 1932 Mark Radebe, leading musical ideologue and Johannesburg music critic, argued that a genuine national musical idiom had to be “based on the real Bantu Music, namely its folk music. […]
In Natal, leaders like John Dube exerted a strong influence on African thinking about ethnic tradition; and both the Ohlange Institute and Adams college were instrumental in bringing educated elite into tune with the new policy. Thus it is by no means accidental that in terms of musical performance, the shift toward traditionalism first took shape at Adams and Ohlange […]"
17
Columbia, another UK-based competitor of Gramophone Company had sent a mobile unit to South Africa in 1929 and then again in 1933. In the first issue of his
African Music Society Newsletter (June 1948), ethnomusicologist, Hugh Tracey referred to Columbia recordings made by the
Zululand War Dancers as excellent examples of
ndhlamu dance — often featuring the
ingoma drum or sometimes clapping. Tracey pointed out that the tracks were incorrectly referred to as "war dancers" and that the drum was erroneously mislabeled as a “tom-tom”. In the same issue he mentions Mameyiguda Zungu (on HMV), a stevedore in the Durban harbour, as being one of the best-known
ndhlamu dance leaders in Durban.
18
Ndhlamu or more broadly speaking
ingoma dance as Erlmann points out, was one of the “
most powerful symbols of working class Zulu identity” and had a strong tradition dating back to pre-colonial times.
Ingoma dancing was for a time banned in Durban after practitioners of the form were linked to riots there in 1929. But through a process of negotiation and “domestication”, using weekly organized dance competitions, the art form was eventually adopted and promoted by White-owned businesses in Johannesburg (notably mining interests) and Durban.
19
Though dance competitions had been staged in Johannesburg as early as 1921, a committee composed exclusively of whites allowed for the staging of the first “Natal Native Dancing Championships” in 1939 in which more than fifty
ingoma teams participated. As Erlmann details in
African Stars: “
One of the most readily observable results of the restructuring of ingoma dance was the emergence of a completely new type of “traditional” dance regalia. Prior to the Dancing Championships most dance troupes in Durban had preferred vividly coloured cloth skirts and a cape-like shoulder covering over a pair of long trousers, vests, and car-tire sandals. When the white organizers of the spectacle suggested that more “traditional”-looking regalia be worn to enhance the visual aspect of the dancing with tourists, most teams readily adopted a completely different outfit of animal skins, sticks, and shields that now forms the standard ingoma “uniform”.
20
Though Erlmann maintains that the performers only donned the more traditional clothing at the request of the white organizers in 1939, quite clearly this image he sourced from the EMI archives shows Mameyiguda and his dance group dressed in traditional attire as early as 1933.
Not all critics, black or white, approved of the style.
Ingoma dance was still viewed by some sectors of the black elite as a “
vestige of the ‘uncivilised’, ‘heathen’ past that stood in the way of full integration into modern South African society.”
21
The linking of traditional Zulu symbols with images of the industrial labor experience of working class blacks was also used as a marketing strategy to entice black consumers. Below,
Gallo’s 78 rpm Singer sleeve from the early 1930s shows idyllic images of a Zulu warrior gazing over land (that ironically is no longer his) and a maiden fetching water; juxtaposed with
ingoma dancers, in the distance, performing at the base a Johannesburg mine.
Incidentally, the image of the Zulu maiden fetching water in the lower right hand corner was also used in a 1930s series of ceramic plates marketed by the UK company, Royal Doulton. These photographs were circulated across a range of media at the time. Another image from the plate series, showing a Zulu woman (Mdabuli) at the entrance of a hut, was sourced from the 1927 Italian film
Siliva Zulu and were taken by the team's anthropologist Lidio Cipriani.
22 Similarly an image of a Zulu warrior in the plate series, like that of Mdabuli, was also featured on postcards.
Another 78 rpm sleeve, on the Shaya label from the 1940s, shows a more considered design with a jazz pianist, as contemporary urban performer, merging with what was becoming the most iconic symbols of Zulu identity: the
isihlangu or shield, assegai and knobkerrie. The target audience here was principally black middle-class consumers. The Shaya label, owned by African Electrical Recording Industries, in the mid 1940s, under Arthur Harris, condensed their name to Recording Industries, or RI, before becoming Trutone Industries in 1949.
In 1952 Hugh Tracey would document the
ingoma dances that were now becoming huge tourist attractions, in his book
African Dances of the Witwatersrand Gold Mines. The book was complemented with accompanying 10” records released by Decca, under Tracey’s
Music of Africa series and issued in South Africa, the UK and USA. Notice the design on the cover linking the
ingoma dancer with the iconic image of the Johannesburg gold mine.
Like the earlier postcards, this Trutone souvenir record cover from 1956 uses a number of images to happily market South Africa to tourist visitors. Photographs of traditional life such as the Zulu maiden reed dance are juxtaposed with a range of eclectic images crudely depicting the black South African experience. Notably, the music on the compilation paints a rather different picture and for the most part features a sampling of contemporary urban styles such as jazz, jive and kwela.
These 1958 LPs were designed specifically for white audiences and the international market. The UK Columbia issue on the left shows a Zulu maiden dance from what I believe is the annual Shembe religious festival, but here decontextualized. On the right is the US issue with a different title:
Music of the African Zulus. Misleading in that not all the music on the compilation is Zulu, nor is it religious or traditional, but rather quite eclectic, contemporary and urban. Interestingly the women’s naked breasts here have been edited with additional in-studio decorative clothing, perhaps suggesting a sensitive shift from the earlier exploitative approach seen in the postcards. However, I suspect this may have had more to do with censorship and “wholesome” marketing in the international context.
Below are examples of record covers exploiting in varied degrees the image of the colonial Zulu rickshaw. The bottom right image shows a more critical and interesting application of the rickshaw image here used satirically on the 1980s debut album of alternative band the Kalahari Surfers.
In the 1960s the apartheid government began to implement major parts of its Separate Development policy. This involved the establishment of separate homeland regions within the borders of the South Africa as "independent countries" based on ethnic and language divisions within the black population. These included Transkei, Ciskei, Venda, KwaZulu, and so on. This 1964 pamphlet below, issued by the South African Information Service in the United States, illustrates quite blatantly, I believe, their motives behind this strategy.
23 By dividing the black population into ethnic language groups the government created the false impression that the white community was in the majority. Ironically whites are not broken down into their ethnic language groups such as Afrikaans, English, Jewish, Greek etc.
Similarly in 1960 the government launched a number of separate, state-run, language-based broadcasting stations under the umbrella of Radio Bantu. These divisions included Radio Zulu, Radio Lebowa, Radio Setswana, etc., and their purpose was to exploit regional differences and promote ethnic identification. Cross-exchange between languages was forbidden, only Zulu could be spoken or performed on Radio Zulu, and so on.
24 The main goal was to discourage a cross-cultural, united African identity that could and eventually would destroy the apartheid state.
This strategy had an impact on record companies who were only assured radio play if they recorded and marketed musicians on ethnic lines. Not only were black musicians encouraged to restrict their lyrics to a particular language, but albums marketed ethnicity. Thus it was common for covers to include the ethnicity of the group, in addition to the particular music genre, for example “Zulu traditional”, “Sotho vocal”, “Zulu disco”, and so on.
25 As can be viewed on the 1971
Zulu Vocal album and two LPs by Babsy Mlangeni below.
Ironically, unforeseen by the government, this strategy generated a whole popular resurgence in neo-traditional music styles in the 1970s and early 80s.
Images with Zulu iconography are almost absent from most South African records in the 1960s, save for those issued under Hugh Tracey’s ILAM label. The first records that reintroduce Zulu ethnic symbols began to appear in the early 1970s. Of note is Welcome Msomi’s critically acclaimed play
Umabatha - The Zulu Macbeth that became a huge success in 1972 and travelled internationally. This record was only recorded and issued in 1975, however.
Another example that also toured globally was the 1974 exploitative musical
Ipi-Tombi produced by Bertha Egnos, considered by many to be propaganda for the apartheid government.
Interestingly plays like these fostered a positive reassessment of “traditional symbols” as David Coplan points out:
“
A last issue of concern to township playwrights during the Struggle period was the proper role of indigenous historical culture in town and township theatre. On the one hand, urban cultural disorientation, social disintegration, and the philosophy of Black Consciousness fostered the positive reassessment of the ‘traditional’ among urban Africans. On the other hand, the success of Welcome Msomi’s Zulu Macbeth, U-Mabatha, and of exploitative displays of African tradition by white producers, Ipi Tombi, nonetheless inspired township playwrights to blend traditional music, dance, and divination scenes into their plays. The verdict of township audiences on these attempts was that ‘traditionality’ was acceptable, even rousingly effective, provided it was done ‘authentically’ - in a manner recognizable from rural community performance - and with expertise.”
26
From 1975 on there is an explosion of records by groups re-introducing ethnic iconography and depictions of the rural experience on their covers. As shown here for example by the Queue Sisters and Mthembu Queens. Curiously the later cover shows the group in traditional dress on the front and contemporary urban clothing on the back.
A major pioneer of the Zulu neo-traditional style of music known as
maskanda was John Bengu, also known as Phuzushukela (literally meaning sugar drinker). As Rob Allingham reveals, Bhengu who, with his distinctive finger-picking, guitar style, started out as a street performer in Durban in the late 1940s, before making his first records at Troubadour around 1955. In 1968 Bhengu moved to Trutone and then worked for a short period with producer Cambridge Matiwane, who may have been instrumental in getting him to perform with a backing band, a notable departure for
maskanda music at that time. These recordings were also his first to use the name Phuzushukela. In 1971, Bhengu moved to GRC, where producer Hamilton Nzimande electrified his sound. The combination of traditional
maskanda with the heavy bass lines of
mbaqanga produced a product that was irresistible and a formulae that remained for the next 30 years.
27 Given that I have none of his early records it is difficult to say at what point Bhengu chose to present himself in traditional Zulu dress on his covers, but this cassette above is from 1977. While this record,
Sehlule Umkhomazi, dating from 1982 is his last.
Likewise other
maskanda artists styled after Bengu, like Moses Mchunu and Philemon Zulu, began producing hit records in an explosion of Zulu neo-traditional music from the mid 1970s to early 80s.
The group that put
maskanda on the global map was Juluka with their 1979 debut LP
Universal Man. The interracial team of Johnny Clegg and Sipho Mchunu defied apartheid orthodoxy and the album was banned from radio play. Here the two pose on a mine dump with the name of the band, which means sweat in Zulu, engraved in a gold bar — alluding to the migrant labor that built Johannesburg.
28
On Juluka’s second album
African Litany, Mchunu is shown attaching a bangle to Clegg's arm and as Michael Drewett in
Composing Apartheid points out: “
These images strongly dismissed the apartheid policy of racial separation and mistrust and accordingly disrupted the apartheid fiction”.
29
Other albums show the group performing the
ingoma stamping dance, continuing the tradition made famous by artists like Mameyiguda in the 1930s.
Below are more examples of covers by other
maskanda groups from the 1980s.
Finally,
maskanda was not the only Zulu traditional music form, other styles include the a cappella vocal tradition,
isicathamiya made famous first by Solomon Linda’s Original Evening Birds in 1939 and then by one of South Africa’s most well-known and successful groups — Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
Their debut LP,
Amabutho, in 1973 became a major success and was one of the first records by black artists to go ‘gold’ in South Africa. Between 1973 and 1986 they would release at least twelve hit records locally before collaborating with Paul Simon on his historic
Graceland album and becoming international stars
Interestingly Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s use of traditional Zulu iconography on the covers of their locally produced albums, prior to the collaboration with Paul Simon, seems quite discreet except for one album,
Shintsha Sithothobala, which shows the group dressed as Zulu rickshaws.
30
When LBM's records began to be marketed in the US and Europe by Shanachie Records in 1984 an image of the group in Zulu traditional dress was chosen for the cover. Likewise for their hit with Paul Simon, “Homeless”.
Other albums issued internationally by companies, such as Shanachie and Rounder Records, since then have used similar marketing strategies.
This leads me to the question of whether the artists here have agency in the decision making of how they are imaged on their album covers? Or is this something determined by the record company? Moreover, does the adoption of Zulu traditional iconography in these contexts reinforce ethnic pride on a global scale or does it simply pander to those old stereotypes established in the Western media by Nathaniel Isaacs and others so long ago in the days of Shaka?
FINAL THOUGHTS
In closing, the Zulu
maskanda tradition continues to be hugely popular in South Africa and was throughout the 1990s. Artists like Phuzekhemisi (medicine drinker), or more recently Izingane Zoma, came to prominence not only for great music but also for controversial and political themes critiquing aspects of contemporary Zulu life.
Zulu iconography also emerged in other genres for example on this 1986 solo jazz record,
Village Dance, by iconic bassist Sipho Gumede. Here he embraces his Zulu roots in red “hot pants”.
And again on his classic 1994 LP
Down Freedom Avenue, where the traditional Zulu shield and weapons have been transformed, through an almost logo-like design, into an iconic brand.
More recently, Zulu traditions continue to be adapted and readapted. For example hip-hop artist Zuluboy samples
maskanda guitar for his own brand of “skandi-hop”.
NOTES
1. Wylie, Dan. 2006. Myth of Iron: Shaka in History, University of KwaZulu Natal Press, Durban; reviewed in: Rory Carroll, "Shaka Zulu's brutality was exaggerated, say new book", The Guardian online, May 21, 2006.
2. Oakes, Dougie, (ed.) 1989. Illustrated History of South Africa: The Real Story, Reader's Digest, Cape Town, p. 87.
3. "The Zoolus of Eastern Africa" in the The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction, London, No. 799, October 8, 1836.
4. The meeting is between Lt. King, his party and Shaka and his described in King's diary. Isaacs in his book quotes extensively from King's diary as that text had come into his possession after King had died at Port Natal.
5. Isaacs, Nathaniel. 1836. Travels and Adventures in Eastern Africa, Descriptive of the Zoolus, Their Manners, Customs, with A Sketch of Natal, Edward Churton, London, p. 60-61.
6. Lindfors, Bernth (ed.) 1999. Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, p. 62.
7. Ibid., p. 81.
8. "The Victory of the Zulus", The New York Times, New York, February 12, 1879.
9. "The Battle of Ulundi", The New York Times, New York, July 25, 1879.
10. Photographs of Cetshwayo and his entourage on the ship Natal were shown in the exhibition: Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive Part III: Poetics and Politics, curated by Tamar Garb at The Walther Collection Project Space, New York, March 22 - May 18, 2013. The exhibition was reviewed in the blog: Art Blat.
11. Binns, C.T. 1963. The Last Zulu King, Longmans, London, p. 190.
12. Nicholson, Martin P. 1996. Catalogue of the Postcards of Southern Africa: Volume 1 - Sallo Epstein, self-published, Northants, UK.
13. An observation noted in more detail by Sandra Klopper during the "Global Zulu" panel discussion.
14. I am indebted to Alan Kelly for his tireless research on the Gramophone Company discography and for graciously sending me his notes on the Zonophone T-series.
15. Ibid.
16. Erlmann, Veit. 1991. African Stars: Studies in Black South African Performance, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 121.
17. Ibid. p. 77.
18. Tracey, Hugh (ed.) 1948. "Records of African Music", African Music Society Newsletter, Roodepoort, Vol. 1, No. 1, July 1948, p. 26.
19. Erlmann, Veit. 1991. African Stars: Studies in Black South African Performance, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 96.
20. Ibid. p. 108-109.
21. Ibid. p. 106.
22. As noted in the exhibition: Siliva Zulu: Silent Pictures Telling Stories, curated by Fiona Clayton, Gerald Klinghardt, and Lalou Meltzer, Iziko Slave Lodge, Cape Town, 2011-2012
23. The Republic of South Africa: 300 Years of Progress, pamphlet issued by the South African Government Information Service, New York, 1964.
24. Drewett, Michael. 2008. "Packaging Desires: Album covers and the Presentation of Apartheid" in Grant Olwage (ed.), Composing Apartheid: Music For and Against Apartheid, Wits University Press, Johannesburg, p. 128.
25. Ibid.
26. Coplan, David B. 2007. In Township Tonight: Three Centuries of South African Black City Music and Theatre, Jacana, Johannesburg, p. 276.
27. Allingham, Rob. 1990. Liner notes to the CD Singing in an Open Space: Zulu Rhythm and Harmony 1962-1982, Rounder Records, Cambridge, MA.
28. Michael Drewett quotes Richard Pithouse in "Packaging Desires: Album covers and the Presentation of Apartheid" in Grant Olwage (ed.), Composing Apartheid: Music For and Against Apartheid, Wits University Press, Johannesburg, 2008, p. 130.
29. Drewett, Michael. 2008. "Packaging Desires: Album covers and the Presentation of Apartheid" in Grant Olwage (ed.), Composing Apartheid: Music For and Against Apartheid, Wits University Press, Johannesburg, p. 130.
30. Twelve LBM's record covers are shown on the back of their Intokoza LP, Ezomdabu (BL 205), Gallo, Johannesburg, 1980.
In November 1958, a month later, the same image could be found 15 000 km away accompanying an article in the Singapore Free Press describing the new London scene with the headline “Now they’re all doing the kwela”. And a subsequent article in the Singapore Times compared the rise of kwela with that of rock ’n roll and pondered whether this new style would supplant rock in popularity. (“Kwela and Rock ’n Roll”, Singapore Times, January 10th 1959) Indeed for a brief period record executives seriously considered investing in the new craze as the next ‘big thing’ to follow the rock phenomenon.
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