Review: Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Photo by Fred Blocher/The Star

A cliché may be a worn-out truth but it’s a truth nonetheless, and one well-known truth came forth boldly Tuesday night inside the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts: Music is a language the whole world speaks.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the nine-piece a cappella chorale from South Africa, performed for a crowd of about 1,600 in the Muriel Kauffman Theatre for two hours, including an intermission, entertaining them with song, dance, comedic bits and stories about their music and their homeland.

They sang mostly in their native Zulu, pulling most of their set list from “Songs From a Zulu Farm,” a collection of childhood songs and an album, it was noted several times, that is up for a Grammy in February.

Ladysmith was founded 50 years ago by a man whose name itself is a song: Joseph Shabalala, 70. He is the group’s conductor, music director, lead vocalist, chief spokesman and patriarch. Half of the men who perform behind him are his sons.

They performed on a stage equipped only with microphones and monitors, although it seemed, especially in this venue, that they could have done without either. They sing in a style called “isicathamiya,” which comprises the lush and layered vocals and the dancing that accompanies it.

Its history goes back to the turn of the 20th century and workers in diamond mines. It is the sound heard in several styles of American music, from gospel and doo-wop to barbershop quartets and Motown soul and R&B.

Each song was a vocal symphony, one vocalist laying down a lead over a bed of eight-part harmonies that typically start in unison, then break into several discrete polyrhythmic parts — some of them percussive noises — then come back around to the all-for-one beginning.

It made for some hypnotic moments, all that rhythmic repetition, especially during the softer numbers.

Some of the songs were introduced briefly. There was one about a donkey, “Imbongolo,” and one about chickens, “Yangiluma Inkukhu.” During most of the songs, the group danced and mimed. A few times they high-kicked in unison, like the Rockettes.

The choreography was charmingly loose and imprecise, in contrast to the tack-sharpness of the vocals. During one number, two of the dancers broke into some b-boy/break-dance moves. There was plenty of comic relief, too, some of it slapstick, some of it good-natured ribbing.

If there was one song everyone came to hear, it was “Homeless,” the track they contributed to Paul Simon’s “Graceland” album. They delivered it late in the second set, and it sounded as transcendent and celestial as it does on the record. One of Shabalala’s sons introduced it, emphasizing its implicit message: We are all one and obligated to take care of those in need.

They sang another song off the “Zulu Farm” album, one everyone in the place was familiar with, “Old McDonald.” Shabalala first reminded the crowd that there was a merchandise table outside the theater loaded with T-shirts, CDs and other treats and that the merch guy might get lonely without much business.

More whimsy followed: Zulu-style, they launched into one of the best-known preschool songs ever, and the elegant theater was filled with joyous, childlike tides of E-I-E-I-Os.

| Timothy Finn, The Star

Comments

[emmbee]

One of the most mesmerizing shows I've ever seen. Theirs is music steeped in nobility, dignity, and joy. An evening that won't soon be forgotten.

[Just Kelly]

Agreed. It was a heck of a show. I never would have guessed at Old Macdonald as an encore piece, but it was fun hearing the whole audience singing along. Very entertaining buncha guys, and boy did they have their act together. Amazing.