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South Africans had their first formal contact
with African-Americans and African-American music on
19 June 1890 when the minstrel troupe of Orpheus
Myron McAdoo's Virginia Jubilee Singers presented a
series of concerts in Cape Town. The minstrel troupe
consisted of six women and four men, and their
appearance was to create a significant impact upon
the music scene, as it later influenced the creation
and formation of the Kaapse Klopse, or
Coon
Carnival.
Soon regular meetings and competitions between
minstrel choirs in Cape Town were popular, forming an entire
subculture of their own. Since its inception at the
turn of the century, the minstrel street carnival
has been an integral part of performing arts culture
for coloureds (mixed race) and whites during Cape
Town's New Year celebrations. More recently it has
changed its name to the
Cape
Minstrel Carnival, although there are still many
who refer to it under its original title.
McAdoo's minstrels stayed and toured throughout
South Africa for eighteen months, visiting places in
the province of the
Eastern Cape such as
Grahamstown,
King William's Town, and Alice, where they
performed at Lovedale College.
Musical history indicates that their impact and
influence upon the Zulu and Xhosa choral traditions
were quite significant, as it introduced innovative
new harmonic concepts and structures, and was to
become a contributing factor and play a crucial role
in the development of South
African jazz.
McAdoo's American minstrel styles reached deep
into South Africa, in mining towns and bush
villages. It reached as far as Gordon Memorial
School, above a valley called Msinga, in Zululand
about 480km southeast of Johannesburg.
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Solomon Linda wrote a song called 'Mbube'
(Zulu for 'the lion'), and with his
group, the Evening Birds, recorded it in
1939.
The song's lyrics told the tale of a
group of men hunting a sleeping lion;
the song was a South African hit,
selling about 100,000 copies during the
1940s.
Pete Seeger, the American folk
singer, heard the song and recorded it
with his folk group, The Weavers, in
1951 under the name 'Wimoweh.'
The song was more recently used in
Disney's Lion King film (the royalties
of which have been part of a major legal
dispute between lawyers representing the
Linda estate and the Disney
corporation).
McAdoo was shocked by the racism
he saw and when he returned to
America he wrote to the Hampton
Institute:
"There is no country in the
world where prejudice is so strong
as here in Africa. The native today
is treated as badly as ever the
slave was treated in Georgia. Here
in Africa the native laws are most
unjust; such as the Christian people
would be ashamed of.
Do you credit a law in a
civilized community compelling every
man of dark skin, even though he is
a citizen of another country to be
in his house by 9 o' clock at night,
or he is arrested?
Before I go into parts of
Africa, I had to get a passport and
a special letter from the governors
and presidents of the Transvaal and
the Orange Free States, or we would
have all been arrested. Black people
who are seen out after 9 o' clock
must have passes from their masters,
indeed, it is so strict that natives
have to get passes for day travel….
I met a few coloured men,
Americans, living here. One opened a
business in Johannesburg and before
he could open, he had to get a white
man to allow him to use his name,
because no Negro is allowed to have
his own business." |
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