RSSMzwakhe [extended]
- Change Is Pain [Rounder, 1988] B+
- Resistance Is Defence [Earthworks, 1992] A
- Izigi [Footsteps] [CCP/EMI, 1994]
- KwaZulu Natal [CCP, 1996] *
See Also:
Consumer Guide Reviews:
Change Is Pain [Rounder, 1988]
Child of a Zulu father, a Xhosa mother, and the Soweto uprising, he lives on the run, reciting his poetry unannounced and unaccompanied at weddings, funerals, union meetings: an authentic art hero, and as committed a revolutionary as ever cut an album. Which doesn't mean he can be comprehended out of context. So what's amazing about his first stab at music isn't the incompleteness of the translation, but the power. Before he utters a word there's some halting guitar that could make you weep, and despite the disorderly percussion favored by Black Consciousness bands he powers a South African dub poetry--with intimations of an apocalypse that's lived every day and agape so hard-earned only a Boersymp would doubt it. B+
Mzwakhe Mbuli: Resistance Is Defence [Earthworks, 1992]
South African pop moves cozy up to African American notions of sophistication, and South African pan-Africanist moves graft a fabricated tradition onto a musical history with no parallel in Africa or anywhere else. Mbuli's fusions are more visionary and more local. Singing or chanting mostly in English or Zulu but occasionally in Xhosa or Venda, his relaxed, pantribal township jive owes all the urban South African styles--mbaqanga, kwela, marabi, even a little mbube. It's pop on South Africa's own terms, too swinging for retro and too jumpy for slick. What's more, this man didn't start out as a musician--like Linton Kwesi Johnson, he's just a poet who loves music enough to do it right. Although he's not as learned as LKJ, his songs are as complete a tour of the apartheid struggle as you're likely to get without reading--and his lyric sheet is a good place to begin. A
Mzwakhe Mbuli: Izigi [Footsteps] [CCP/EMI, 1994]
"I Am a Cloud"; "I Am No Longer the Same"; "Richman"
Mzwakhe Mbuli: KwaZulu Natal [CCP, 1996]
even protesting Zulu-on-Zulu violence, he's ill at ease rounding mbaqanga into a vehicle of pop reconciliation ("Freedom Puzzle," "Our Music") *