South African mbaqanga
The Mahotella Queens, Hilda Tloubatla, Mildred Mangxola, and Nobesethu Mbadu, are part of the legend of the urban South African music known as mbaquanga (the Zulu word for a kind of dumpling, implying the homemade quality of the music's origin). In the early '60s, they helped the legendary Simon Nkabindé Mahlathini (the "Lion of Soweto") and the Makgona Tsothle Band create mbaqanga, a fusion of traditional South African tribal musics (Zulu, Sotho, Shangaan and Xhosa, among others) with marabi (South African jazz), blues, soul, and gospel. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens played beer halls and township dances in South Africa. Their original sound came to be dubbed the "indestructible beat of Soweto", and their solid four-to-the-floor dance rhythm and soaring vocal harmonies came to embody the spirit of the oppressed peoples of the townships. They took a break in the mid-'70s to raise families, but reunited with Malathini to tour in 1987 and took audiences in Europe and the U.S. by storm. Following the tragic death of Mahlathini and the dissolution of the Makagona Tsothle Band in 1999, the Mahotella Queens rallied and reinvented themselves, and are back in full swing with a national tour and a new CD titled Sebai Bai. In 2000, they received the second annual WOMEX (Worldwide Music Expo) Award, presented for outstanding contribution to world music. At the award ceremony, it was said that "the Mahotella Queens represent so much of what is the best in the music of South Africa: the finely honed art of passionate singing, the latticework of funky rhythms, and the breathtaking art of spectacular live performance."
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Music Sampler: "Awungibhaleli Ngani"