An archive of live musicians who form and are part of primarily black and brown bands in South Africa. The bands themselves and their various scenes that can be best described as Brown Bands of a bohemian bend working as musicians performing and sometimes releasing music in Johannesburg for the past 20 years... This band scene was and remains niche but still exists... sometimes one or two bands of the bands have a national or international appeal that shines a light, however briefly on these brown bands on the fringes of the South African live music industry.
There were always brown bands formed by musicians finding sounds and each each other along the way.. From omasiganda, travelling guitarist vocalists busking in duets, to the introduction of the pennywhistle and other wind instruments such as as the saxophone paring that to create marabi... In this part of the world music making was always a communal gesture and so it would make sense that there is a long history of group music making. This tradition transformed into small vocal ensembles and bands, adapting and creating new sounds and freedoms from the restrictions the early city of Johannesburg. When migrant workers finding themselves in the cities, found new sounds in the city, engines, trains, a shuffling and a bustling, clinking bottles, hooters and of course the shiny western musical instrument... the sounds begged to commune.
Rehearsing, Performing, entertaining, Protesting, recording, freely gathering, making music, they did until they no longer could, this for various reasons which we shall call "The Politics". This was in the 50's and 60's, There were bands, part of a continuation of musicians who according to Hugh Masekela, engineered and realized how modern indigenous sounds could be interpreted and translated onto western Instruments. Mbaqanga was a process of discovering the collaborative effort of sound brown bodies and western instruments. According to West Nkosi, an Icon in the genre, named after a staple meal, mbaqanga was a homegrown sound that blended various influences and sounds found in the cities and townships.
Alot of that music disappeared, was destroyed, was censored by the apartheid government, largely because it was a cosmopolitan music, that in its philosophy was against the "separateness" that apartheid espoused. It didn't fit into the traditional mould that the government of the time thought was "indigenous music"... In our possession we have Physical music records that were "scratched" deliberately to mute certain songs, this by apartheid censors... all this to prevent the people from hearing certain, non-politically charged music. With the unstable political situation, the musicians were not allowed to gather in groups, and so the music suffered. The introduction of American and british pop added further complications and opportunities to a budding music industry trying to finding itself. The sounds and genres had various incarnations and Interpretations underground and recordings survive form the 50's , 60's, 70's, and 80's.
In the early 2000's there rose a scene on the streets and venues of Johannesburg... live instrumentalists and singer-songwriters in communion, they did it for the love, a looming revolution and some continue to this day... some recordings survive. I would first encounter Ntjapedi at a Brixton Venue Called House of Nstako, from there I found myself in the Jozi live music underground scene, which led me to being immersed in the South African Music industry. This site serves that history and the future of what is treasured here, What I' would like to call "Nu-mbaqanga", tracing influnces and bands that led to the resurgence of early 2000's of live southern African band music with a glocal appeal.