Neat Kwela memoir

s1m0n · Post by **s1m0n** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:09 pm

It was only right that the humble pennywhistle became a Stradivarius in the hands of a young African man. What village youngster hasn’t fashioned a bamboo or reed flute and wistfully played tunes as he stood guard over his father’s or uncle’s goats or cattle. Or fearfully lay alone at night to protect the garden from marauding baboons with only his handmade flute to light the darkness. The humble whistle, truly the national instrument of Southern Africa!

I wait in vain, it seems, for kwela to get the attention it deserves. There are hours and hours of recorded kwela somewhere in South Africa, and all I've got are two tracks by Lemmy Mabaso and the Spokes Mashiyone LP.

Someone should write the definitive book, and some adventurous jazz label (I pitched Proper records) should do the box set. Kwela is overdue for a revival.

s1m0n · Post by **s1m0n** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 3:43 pm

Has anyone heard this CD?

The Pennywhistle - The Magical Instrument Of Afric

There's a couple of kwela sample trax, but I'm at work and can't download music.

Cynth · Post by **Cynth** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:11 pm

Hi s1m0n--I'm glad you posted this because I had heard the word kwela mentioned (I think Wombat is really interested in this as well), but I never come across anything saying what it was.

From the article in your first post, it sounds like its heday was in the '50's and '60's--just based on a quick reading---I don't know how much it is played now. Could that be why recordings are so hard to find? That was a pretty long time ago. And maybe the people playing this music were not able to record it or something since that was a bad time there. Just some uneducated thoughts.

I listened to the tracks you posted. They were really nice. They are kind of sweet-sounding, like sweet-spirited, bouncy, real, up-beat.

I found this website, don't know anything about it. It explains the music called marbai (so did your first post) and then people can click on the list on the right-hand side to read about the kwela, in fact, all sorts of South African music. This is just for people like me who didn't know anything at all about it.
http://www.southafrica.info/ess_info/sa ... 922563.htm

s1m0n · Post by **s1m0n** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:29 pm

Kwela was the result when american swing and jive collided with southern african folk melodies and instruments in the fifties. It's got to be the perfect small-ensemble busking music--irresistably happy music you can play with a whistle, a cigar-box guitar and a wash-tub or tea-chest bass.

I have an unrealized fantasy of putting together a group and going out and busking at the montreal jazz festival, to see if we could upstage some of the acts...

Kwele is jazz with a tin whistle lead. How cool is that?

Some early kwela stars like Abdullah Ibrahim (Dollar Brand) went on to lengthy careers playing jazz sax.

Congratulations · Post by **Congratulations** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:33 pm

s1m0n wrote:I have an unrealized fantasy of putting together a group and going out and busking...

I'm trying to get a group together as we speak to play some kwela. Have been for a month or so. So far I've got a guitar. We're gonna start practicing as soon as we find a bass player, I think.

s1m0n · Post by **s1m0n** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 4:35 pm

Congratulations wrote: We're gonna start practicing as soon as we find a bass player, I think.

Hmm. I have instructions for making a washtub bass. To bad you're not closer...

Cynth · Post by **Cynth** » Mon Sep 19, 2005 5:00 pm

My post sounded funny because I was confused. I somehow thought kwela was what the pennywhistle was called. Okay, now I get it. Kwela is the name of the music, pennywhistle is called pennywhistle.

Onward and upward. No response necessary.

Wombat · Post by **Wombat** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 12:43 am

Cynth wrote:My post sounded funny because I was confused. I somehow thought kwela was what the pennywhistle was called. Okay, now I get it. Kwela is the name of the music, pennywhistle is called pennywhistle. Onward and upward. No response necessary.

Actually 'kwela' means 'get up.' That was the instruction given to buskers who were caught by the police and the wagon was where they were supposed to get up.

Just a word of caution. I'd be disinclined to busk on kwela with homemade instruments. When Africans do that kind of thing, they play the homemade instruments brilliantly. In the hands of a Westerner it would probably come out like skiffle, in part because you won't come from a tradition in which making instruments was culturally central and in part becasue kwela groups actually weren't unsophisticated. Just use a guitar or, even better still, add about three or four secondary whistlers playing rhythmic harmonies. That would be much closer to the real thing. Sometimes, as with the concertina jive that preceded kwela, there was a mix of traditional instruments and western instruments but these traditional instruments would be pretty well crafted.

I play township melodies on whistle quite a lot and I've been thinking of multitracking some whistle-only arrangements. Using several whistles, high to low, you could get a lot of harmonic richness. The trick is to play very rhythmically.

MarcusR · Post by **MarcusR** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 1:47 am

Kwela is what planted my interest of whistles. It just that it took some 20 years before I realized the connection.

When I was about six years old I started to discover my parent’s record collection. Among the all the Beatles and jazz records there was one I use to call “The Giraffe” that I loved more than anything else. I must have played it thousands of times (especially the tracks with “Solven Whistlers”), driving everyone else in the house nuts. That could also be the reason why it disappeared when we moved out of Stockholm in the late seventies.

The record was titled “Something New From Africa” (Decca LK4292, 1958) and was at the time a monster hit. Unfortunately it has been out of print for over 30 years and I can’t understand why there hasn’t been a new CD release yet.
I was lucky to find this record again on a collector’s auction but I have heard of others that found there’s on garage sales etc.

In my opinion it is the Kwela record, and if you are into this kind of stuff keep your eyes open fore something that looks like this:

The title track with Solven Whistlers can be found on a good Kwela/African jazz collection called “Township Jazz 'N' Jive” at Amazon, got clips of all the tunes so it is worth checking out.

Cheers!

/MarcusR

Impempe · Post by **Impempe** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 2:36 am

As a side note, Honer supplied penny whistles in South Africa after a prototype. If I remember correctly, they supplied penny whistles over a 20/30 year period that went into the millions. The keys that they used were G, C and Bb. The Bb seemed to be the real popular one and was nicknamed the BeeBee for obvious reasons. I went to the Honer agents in Durban recently to see if they stocked any of these whistles. They had a cupboard of "museum" pieces and they had a G (low) which was not for sale - at any price! It is the only Honer that I have seen in 20 years besides a C I saw briefly in someones hand before I was interested in the whistle. You would think that with the amount of whistles that Honer made, you would have found a couple on the garage sales. Honer of course have lost the plans for these whistles. The only whistle available in South Africa now is the generation and some clarks. It is my passion to see the kwela tradition raised up to it's former glory. The unfortunate thing is that what was once an easily affordable, availabe instrument in SA is now something of a rareity and the tradition is dying out. There are still a couple of old schoolers who play kwela, but it is few and far between. The natural ability of the local street children is fantastic, if only we could provide cheap instruments abundantly.

Bert Kaempfert was one of the early Kwela immitators and because he could not get ahold of a pennywhistle in Germany (strange as it may seem with Honer being the supplier in SA) he composed and played many tunes in this kwela style with a picolo flute as the whistle equivalent. I love the names of the tunes on the album I have - Tootie Flootie, That Happy Feeling, Black Beauty, Wimoweh (also known as When The Lion Feeds),Market Day, A Swinging Safari. Another recommendation that has not been mentioned is anything by "Big Voice" Jack Lorele who played a tune or two with the Dave Matthews Band to much acclaim. He died recently and was a great loss to the whistle playing community here in SA. If you see the CD South African Penny Whistle Favorites, buy it you won't regret it.

Ian

andymac · Post by **andymac** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 2:36 am

Have you tried the Positively Testcard CDs

http://www.btinternet.com/~adam.keelan/

I can never understand why kwela hasn't had a massive revival of interest. It is so joyous and infectious it makes ITM seem dour in comparison

brewerpaul · Post by **brewerpaul** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:06 am

andymac wrote:Have you tried the Positively Testcard CDs

http://www.btinternet.com/~adam.keelan/

I can never understand why kwela hasn't had a massive revival of interest. It is so joyous and infectious it makes ITM seem dour in comparison

Buy them all!! Wonderful stuff.

Wombat · Post by **Wombat** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:18 am

For older styles of South African music including kwela check out this site. I have most of these records and can heartily recommend them. There are other sites which offer excellent kwela reissues but I'll need some time to track them down.

http://www.slipcue.com/music/internatio ... ve_01.html

s1m0n · Post by **s1m0n** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 10:35 am

Thanks for the info, chaps. I don'[t have time to investigate the links, but I will.

s1m0n · Post by **s1m0n** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 11:30 am

MarcusR wrote:Kwela is what planted my interest of whistles. It just that it took some 20 years before I realized the connection.

When I was about six years old I started to discover my parent’s record collection. Among the all the Beatles and jazz records there was one I use to call “The Giraffe” that I loved more than anything else. I must have played it thousands of times (especially the tracks with “Solven Whistlers”), driving everyone else in the house nuts. That could also be the reason why it disappeared when we moved out of Stockholm in the late seventies.

That's funny--I had exactly the asme experience, only it was with a Gallo records sampler called Music Sounds of Africa. And Stockholm didn't have anythign to do with it. The record featured kwel'ers Lemmy Mabaso and Spokes Mashiyone (both credited only as "lemmy" and "spokes") as well as Miriam Makeba's sterling hits Pata Pata and The Click Song, some gum boot dancers, etc.

I played it a lot, and spent some time staring at the weird image of what had to be an instrument on the cover. Only after I took up the whistle, twenty years later, did I realize what I'd been looking at.

I still have it.