Isicathamiya is a Zulu style from South Africa that's been popular for decades – and it captured the world's attention in 1986 when Paul Simon leavened his seminal Graceland album with the music's rousing harmonies. But Isicathamiya is part of a long evolution of Zulu choral music, and has deep roots.
Based partly on the four-part harmony of 19th century African American jubilee singing, Zulu choral music has undergone steady re-Africanization. Nutured in fierce, men's singing competitions in South Africa's mining hostels, the style once known as mbube took its name from Soloman Linda's big-selling 1939 hit, which the Weavers covered successfully in the US as "Wimoweh" in 1950. The song soared again on the US charts in '61 when the Tokens reworked it as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." Meanwhile, back home, mbube had evolved into the aggressive, almost shouted 1940s isikhwela jo-or "bombing"—style and then into the softer, velvety isicathamiya ("to walk on one's toes lightly"), pioneered by the King Star Brothers.
Isicathamiya's most successful popularizers Ladysmith Black Mambazo came together in the town of Ladysmith in the early '60s under a gentle visionary, Joseph Shabalala. Joseph's lithe alto coos and growls above two tenors and seven basses that make soothing, rhythmic textures punctuated by breathy bursts. – Banning Eyre, Courtesy Afropop Worldwide: www.afropop.org
