Ladysmith Black Mambazo played here last night as part of the CAC Performing Arts series. It was a very cool show, and an excellent example of a musical experience that’s very different live than it would ever be on record. The depth and spatial volume of their sound (and the way it vibrated your liver) is pretty tough to recreate at home, even with a nice surround sound system.
There’s a certain hypnotic sameness to their show that’s either wonderful or ultimately boring depending on the listener. I really enjoyed it, but it did tend to put you in a trance. They did some cool dancing and other stage antics that helped keep one’s attention focussed on the stage, and the high kicking of their not-quite-so-young leader Joseph Shabalala was quite remarkable. Sub-Evil Boy enjoyed it as well.
Their style of choral singing is quite amazing and beautiful, and powerfully different from traditional European classical singing, which tends to look down on the swooping slides, background chatter, and nifty animal noises that Ladysmith used so effectively. Their stage presence was also quite unusual in a cool way, chatting back and forth in the background and wandering on and off stage. I suspect that much of this reflects their origins in late night musical competitions in venues that were anything but upper crust, and it was a nice alternative to the highly formal presentations one often gets at such an event.
When we were in Birmingham (UK) on sabbatical, we went to several performances by African musical groups, and the audience often contained a large number of Africans. That was cool because they knew the music and language and culture and would dance and sing and even shout up to the stage. Last night we sat attentively and clapped loudly between songs, but we were clearly outsiders looking in.
Currently listening to: Ourselves as we do our show, “Unhindered by talent”, on KUMM :-).
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