Xhosa music has long been a major part of the music of South Africa, especially in the field of jazz. There are many Xhosa clans, each with their own styles of drumming and dialects.
NoFinish Dywili assisted from 1979 in Africanising local Christian liturgical music and the Ngqoko Women's Cultural Group helped preserve the Xhosa music of the village of Ngqoko, including the married woman's umngqungqo style, danced at the intonjane ceremony of girls' rites of passage. Professor Andrew Tracey, director of the International Library of African Music, commented on "the polyphonic singing, the three types of bow they play (including the uhadi gourd bow) the umngqokolo overtone singing". According to Tracey, the Khoisan had a big influence on this music.
Read more about Xhosa Music: Performers
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“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
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