Artist Bio:
Spokes Mashiyane was the most famous pennywhistle player of the South African kwela music era.
Born in the area now known as Limpopo in South Africa's most northern province, Mashiyane learned the three-hole reed flute common among black cattle herders. When he moved to Johannesburg he got a pennywhistle, a six-hole tin flute, and started to ply his skills on the streets for tips. A talent scout for Trutone Records, Strike Vilakazi, caught one of these jams, and Mashiyane began his recording career.
Mashiyane worked with guitarist and composer Allen Kwela, and it was the latter's surname that became the title of a popular genre of South African music that dominated much of the 1950s. (The genre's name is also ascribed to the word khwela, which means "get up" or "climb on" in Zulu and Xhosa, a term the white police knew to shout when they were arresting black people. Also, the Zulu and Xhosa word ikhwelo means "shrill whistle.")
The sound Mashiyane and Kwela helped develop was based on South African traditional music, marabi, a hypnotic and cyclical style that developed in 1920s sheebens (illicit drinking joints), and the pennywhistle music that Willard Cele played in the late 1940s and in the popular 1951 movie The Magic Garden. Like in marabi, kwela's chord changes are simple but the rhythms are joyous and swinging, influenced by American jazz. The pennywhistle was generally accompanied by acoustic guitar, bass, drums and sometimes piano.
Allen Kwela eventually decided to concentrate on jazz, and Mashiyane was soon known as King Kwela after he had a massive hit single in 1954: "Ace Blues" backed by "Kwela Spokes." Mashiyane fronted various bands (the Solven Whistlers; the All-Star Flutes) and was a frequent accompanist for Miriam Makeba and the Skylarks. But kwela music wasn't just black township music; it gained a following among delinquent white hipsters known as "ducktails." (Other pennywhistle stars of the day included "Big Voice" Jack Lerole, Sparks Nyembe, Jerry Mlotshwa and Abia Temba.)
In the late '50s, Mashiyane picked up the saxophone, and in 1958 he had a big hit with the instrument leading the charge on "Big Joe Special," a tune that helped spawn the 1960s phenomenon called township jive. But by the time Mashiyane died in the early 1970s he was largely forgotten. He received almost no royalties from his music due to record-label malfeasance. Additionally, the little money he did receive in his heyday was often strong-armed away by tsotsis (township thugs).
Even though Mashiyane cut numerous tunes, the only recordings that are available are spread out on various compilations and King Kwela, a 12-song, 31-minute disc that came out in 2000 on the legendary South African label Gallo. —Christopher Porter
