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>South African Music

From missionary hymns and jazz to kwela and kwaito, South African musicians have always given international trends an unmistakeable flavour of our own.

The story of South African music is one of dialogue with imported forms, and varying degrees of hybridisation over the years.

From the earliest colonial days until the present time, South African music has created itself out of the mingling of local ideas and forms with those imported from outside the country, giving it all a special twist that carries with it the unmistakeable flavour of the country.

Beginnings
In the Dutch colonial era, from the 17th century on, indigenous tribespeople and slaves imported from the east adapted Western musical instruments and ideas.

The Khoi-Khoi, for instance, developed the ramkie, a guitar with three or four strings, based on that of Malabar slaves, and used it to blend Khoi and Western folk songs. The mamokhorong was a single-string violin that was used by the Khoi in their own music-making and in the dances of the colonial centre, Cape Town, which rapidly became a melting pot of cultural influences from all over the world.

Western music was played by slave orchestras (the governor of the Cape, for instance, had his own slave orchestra in the 1670s), and travelling musicians of mixed-blood stock moved around the colony entertaining at dances and other functions, a tradition that continued into the era of British domination after 1806.

In a style similar to that of British marching military bands, coloured (mixed race) bands of musicians began parading through the streets of Cape Town in the early 1820s, a tradition that was given added impetus by the travelling minstrel shows of the 1880s and has continued to the present day with the great carnival held in Cape Town every New Year.

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