Origins of Guitar Music

Treasures continue to emerge from the audio archive of Hugh Tracey. The South African broadcaster turned field recordist amassed probably the largest body of pre-independence recordings of music in central and southern Africa. This focus on guitar music offers a journey from remote forest villages into the cities and mining camps, where by the 1950s, the guitar had become an important status symbol. It was also a powerful vehicle for introducing local ethnic traditions into an emerging national pop music. Depending on where they lived, miners and urban professionals heard on their radios American jazz, its South African imitators, Cuban pop, and its Congolese imitators, as well as all sorts of traditional music. All of that is echoed in these recordings from Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi during the 1950s.

The selection begins with Congolese music from Katanga, near the border with Zambia. In these recordings, we hear little of the lilt of the rumba brewing in Leopoldville. These players seem more to be using the guitar in place of traditional instruments, notably the likembe, a thumb piano. Across the border in the mining camps of Zambia, we find 12/8 skiffle, and also songs full of the swing rhythms and harmonized vocals of South African jazz.

The latter portion of this set comes from the early 1950s and includes fascinating material by Zimbabwean guitarist George Sibanda and Congolese fingerpicker John Bosco Mwenda. In part because of Tracey's recordings, these men became radio stars and highly influential models to the next generation of guitarists. Sibanda in particular brings together country and western, jazz, and southern African roots in the most uncanny way.

The final tracks, from Kisangani, Congo, do show the influence of rumba. The clave rhythm and the flowing harmonized vocals that would sweep the continent off its feet had already arrived in this remote city in1952.

These recordings offer us a chance to consider the great mixing pot of central and southern African pop before the ingredients were really stirred together. Once you've considered these recordings carefully, pop music from this part of Africa will never sound quite the same.

— Courtesy Calabash Music