I love the music of the world—music from all the different
countries and cultures. It’s the music of celebration and struggle, liberation
and loss and love and life and all that is human in all its musical expression.
Sometimes the languages foreign to me have translations that
help me to see more easily what the music conveys. At other times, I do a bit of research to
learn about the place where the music originates and the people who compose and
perform it. The time in history it’s from also gives great insight into the meaning
behind the music of a certain region of the world.
A little background provides the camera of my mind the
setting it needs to let my imagination fill in the rest of the musical picture.
With that, I just go with the flow of the songs, the tenor of the notes, the emotions
of the singers and players that always come through in sound. I hear their feelings
and the feelings they want to evoke in their listeners.
One day there was a group that caught my ear and the rhythms
of my soul as I was listening to one of those stations you randomly come across
on your car radio and can never find again. Luckily, the show host came on
immediately after the song and spoke of the “…music of the streets of South
Africa” by Bongo Maffin. It was dance, R&B,
reggae and a bit of rap and…something more, something exotic. That something
that grabs you, moves you, makes you smile and sing the sound of the words with
the group and wonder what it is like to be there, wherever there happens to be.
As soon as I got home I went on the Internet to find this
exciting group with the cool name that I first thought was Bongo Muffin. They
had been around since the 90s adding the sounds of South Africa’s more traditional
music to everything from gospel to dancehall. They are said to be “…an
excellent example of the multiculturalism of kwaito…” with their singers
bringing several languages to their music. But, they are also a group that has
become world famous and award winning. They are contemporary and yet build on a
heritage that includes the South African consciousness that includes township warring
against apartheid to activism against HIV/AIDS on the continent. And, mostly, they are really good music that
makes me listen and dance and appreciate what they are sharing.
Here now is Bongo Maffin:
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