Keeping a rural African vibe alive
In the global village, hearing an utterly unexpected style of music has become an increasingly endangered experience. But it’s still possible to find surprising and strangely beautiful sounds if one knows where to look. In Boston, the search often leads to World Music/CRASHarts, which presents the US concert debut of the Ngqoko Women’s Cultural Group tomorrow night at the Somerville Theatre.
The highly respected 15-member South African ensemble
performs with a cast of six women and one man singing traditional Xhosa songs from the Eastern Cape. Ngqoko is dedicated to preserving ancient vocal forms involving soft, humming overtones, startling musical scales, intricate polyphony, and thick, coruscating harmonies. Hailing mostly from the rural village of Lady Frere, the singers accompany themselves on various drums and bows, including the uhadi and inkangi, which create a sharp twang much like the Brazilian birimbau.
While the group has performed internationally, Ngqoko has never been able to arrange an American tour before. Tomorrow’s performance only came about because the singers are featured in South African director Yael Farber’s “MoLoRa,” an adaptation of the Oresteia Trilogy that transposes Aeschylus’s exploration of revenge and retribution to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
When World Music’s Maure Aronson, who also happens to be South African, heard about the ensemble, he jumped at the opportunity to present the leading practitioners of a musical form unknown in the West (and obscure even in South Africa).
“That’s what intrigued me,” Aronson says. “It’s a very ancient sound, coming from a place that we do not know. It’s similar to when we were the first in the US to present the Tuvan throat singers Huun-Huur-Tu. This time I got a tape from the ethnomusicologist Ted Levin and was just struck by this totally otherworldly music that reminds me of nothing else.”
The idea for the group first came about in 1979 when NoFinish Dywili, a singer and expert percussionist who has since passed away, realized that the music from her village Ngqoko was starting to fade from collective memory. She was determined to preserve the traditions, and the Women’s Cultural Group took shape when her neighbor, Tsolwana Mpayipheli, introduced Dywili to a German monk interested in Xhosa culture.
Serving as translator, Mpayipheli helped assemble the group, which quickly gained recognition in South Africa and abroad, performing widely in the Middle East and Europe and recording three albums, including “Le Chant des Femmes Xhosa” for the Musee d’Ethnographie de Geneve.
Mpayipheli, one of two founding members still active in Ngqoko, was raised on the music by his grandmother, a skilled musician who played the uhadi, a bow attached to a calabash resonator. He learned to play it, too, though it’s traditionally considered a woman’s instrument.
“The bow is played by the grandmothers as a lullaby instrument at night,” Mpayipheli says. “My grandmother played for us, telling us stories as we were falling asleep about animals becoming human and speaking, warning us not to do something bad.”
In addition to instructional and cautionary songs, Ngqoko’s repertoire includes traditional healing songs and pieces by married women sung at the time of girls’ initiation into womanhood.
American audiences may have encountered some of the songs on Miriam Makeba’s astonishing 1988 album, “Sangoma.” It’s a singular project from her discography in which she re-creates songs she learned from her mother, who was a sangoma, or traditional healer, by overdubbing her voice multiple times. With seven singers, Ngqoko creates the striking polyphonic blends the old-fashioned way.
“A lady in our group is a sangoma, singing the same music,” Mpayipheli says, referring to Makeba’s album. “They are songs about healing and prayer songs, songs about relationships and friendships.”
While the group has won widespread respect, and is often invited to give workshops at South African universities, Ngqoko is fighting a rear guard action at home, where the magnetic draw of Western pop culture is far more alluring to the youth of the Eastern Cape. It’s a dilemma faced by traditional performers around the world, from Eastern Europe to South Africa.
“I’ve been going from one school to another, telling them a man without roots is like a boat without a rudder,” Mpayipheli says. “Young people say it’s backward. I’m so worried. If the ladies die, the music will disappear with them.”
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