Graceland is twenty years past, and it’s over a decade since the ANC were elected, yet in 2006 Ladysmish Black Mambazo remains the only South African ensemble to routinely tour North American. Don’t get me wrong, I love Joseph Shabalala and the boys, but it’s time to get caught up. Thandiswa Mazwai’s Zabalaza is – if nothing else – an important corrective. Owing as much stylistically to the socially conscious R&B of Donny Hathaway, contemporary American gospel and British acid jazz, as the traditional Xhosa songs of her mother’s home village, Zabalaza is the embodiment of a sophisticated, youthful, urban, and international, post-Apartheid generation. If Ladysmith are a South African Fairfield Four, then Thandiswa may well prove to be – as has been suggested elsewhere – her nation’s Lauren Hill.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Thandiswa - Zabalaza (Escondida)
Graceland is twenty years past, and it’s over a decade since the ANC were elected, yet in 2006 Ladysmish Black Mambazo remains the only South African ensemble to routinely tour North American. Don’t get me wrong, I love Joseph Shabalala and the boys, but it’s time to get caught up. Thandiswa Mazwai’s Zabalaza is – if nothing else – an important corrective. Owing as much stylistically to the socially conscious R&B of Donny Hathaway, contemporary American gospel and British acid jazz, as the traditional Xhosa songs of her mother’s home village, Zabalaza is the embodiment of a sophisticated, youthful, urban, and international, post-Apartheid generation. If Ladysmith are a South African Fairfield Four, then Thandiswa may well prove to be – as has been suggested elsewhere – her nation’s Lauren Hill.
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