Music of South Africa

Music Of South Africa

The South African music scene includes both popular (jive) and folk forms. Pop styles are based on four major sources, Zulu isicathamiya singing and harmonic mbaqanga.

Christian missions provided the first organized musical training in the country, bringing to light many of the modern country's earliest musicians, including Enoch Sontonga, who wrote the national anthem Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika. By the end of the nineteenth century, South African cities like Cape Town were large enough to attract foreign musicians, especially American ragtime players. African American spirituals were popularized in the 1890s by Orpheus McAdoo's Jubilee Singers.

Read more about Music Of South Africa:  The 1960s, South African Music Today, Neo-traditional Styles

Famous quotes containing the words music of, music, south and/or africa:

    For I have learned
    To look on nature, not as in the hour
    Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
    The still, sad music of humanity.
    William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

    If this be love, to clothe me with dark thoughts,
    Haunting untrodden paths to wail apart;
    My pleasures horror, music tragic notes,
    Tears in mine eyes and sorrow at my heart.
    If this be love, to live a living death,
    Then do I love and draw this weary breath.
    Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)

    While the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.
    Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)

    Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.
    Jean Genet (1910–1986)