Sad news out of South Africa today with the passing of Joseph Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. After getting my diploma from Harmolodic High School, I matriculated at Zulu U. where I was tour manager for Mambazo. I spent 4 years bouncing around the world with them, producing all their concerts, developing new projects for them and holding the world at bay while Joseph invented the universe.
Joseph Shabalala was already a kind of a rok star when I met him. It had been 2 decades since he had started Mambazo and become a major cultural force in apartheid South Africa and it was 4 years since the release of Paul Simon’s Graceland. Graceland, which featured Mambazo, had become one of the biggest global hit albums of the decade and Simon had toured throughout the world with Mambazo. Mambazo had a record deal with Warner Brothers and was represented by a major entertainment agency, both courtesy of Paul Simon.
But the guy I met and brought on tour hardly seemed like a rok star. Nearly 50 years old, gentle, soft-spoken with an incomplete command of the English language and even less Western cultural awareness. I started to become aware of this when I saw that we were going to Memphis and asked him if Paul Simon had taken him to Graceland. “What is Graceland?” he asked me. “It was Elvis Presley’s house,” I told him. “Who is Elvis Presley?” he asked me. Okay, I could see that I would have to reset my parameters here (btw, I did take them to Graceland and they gave us the custom rok star treatment; Joseph thought it was beautiful).
It also took me a while to realize how deeply the Zulu culture that Mambazo represented ran through the music. This was not entertainment, as far as Joseph was concerned; this was their cultural capital, accumulated over millennia. And it wasn’t only the music that they represented; it was the way Zulus cured illness, their courting rituals, their hunting rituals, their military history… (all of this, which I spent countless hours studying with them, was amazingly rich and elaborate). Even if it didn’t appear directly in the music, it was part of the message.
And that message came through, loud and clear. It didn’t come through for everybody— for some fans, Mambazo just seemed to be the multi-kulti “world music” flavor of the month, others simply enjoyed the gentle sounds of a cappella Zulu choral music— but for people who were culturally tuned in, it was like an enormous, 3D video billboard. Everywhere we went, people came out of the woodwork to seek out the people bearing this message: The Breton in France, the Inuit in Alaska, the Maori in Singapore, the Kolsch in Germany, the native Hawaiians… all came to Joseph with the same story: “They think we are part of the dominant culture here and they want to eliminate our language and our history but we need to show our children how important this is. We need to do what you have done!”
Of course, nowhere was the impact of this greater than in South Africa. Even if Mambazo was singing a simple love song, the message to Pretoria was unmistakeable: these stories have meaning and value that no apartheid laws can take away.
But it meant even more to Black South Africans. Many times I had Zulus, Sothos, Xhosas, Vendas tell me about the impact of hearing Mambazo sing in their native language. Their music seemed to mean more to a man in a forced-labor camp or to a kid with narrow prospects than any pop music meant to free Westerners. Mambazo was the living embodiment of the possibility that change might come one day. There were even mythical tales, like the one of Joseph’s black Mercedes coming upon warring factions in the heat of battle. The story was that arms were laid down only to allow Shabalala to pass through unharmed. Fighting, of course, continued once the car was safely on its way.
Joseph was well aware of the burden he had taken on but he wore all of this very lightly. He had been set on this path a long time ago and everything that happened to him or around him was meant to be part of it. If some guy named Paul Simon wanted to sing with him, we must sing with him (little known fact: he had never heard of Paul Simon when Paul showed up). If we are going to go to Australia, if this Peter Gabriel wants to work with us, if it’s going to snow in July, it must be so. Nothing surprised him, nothing impressed him. The work meant everything to him but least of all was he impressed with himself. He was a surprisingly little guy up close, with a very focused demeanor but he was quick to smile and laugh. He had a spectacular laugh.
Joseph had a rare quality that a small number of artists with whom I have worked seem to share. Maybe it was because of this acceptance of all things that doors that were always locked seemed to fly open for him. His Zulu name for Paul Simon was “Vulindlela” which means, “the one who opens the gate” but no gate seemed to be closed to Joseph. I can’t tell you how many times we made a flight we shouldn’t have made or we met a person who changed the trajectory of our day in just such a way that things fell into place. It happened so often that it didn’t even seem strange; it was just the way of the world around Joseph Shabalala.
How exactly Joseph created the music was something I still did not know for several years after I had started working with him (and, as far as I know, this story has never been told). Joseph explained to me that there was a chorus of children who came to him in his dreams and they sang the songs to him (“They are not on the earth and they are not in the sky but in between”). Joseph’s work was to convey these songs, part by part, from these children to his brothers and cousins who formed the group. When the moment of inspiration came, everything else stopped and the guys got to work. Joseph started to teach the song by having the guys sing the melody in unison, continuously without stopping. Over time, Joseph would teach new parts to members of the group, one by one. As he did so, the song became richer and fuller. Eventually each member of the group had his part and the song was complete. It didn’t matter if we were in the middle of a soundcheck or waiting for a flight to Germany; it had to happen then and there. This is part of what I meant when I said, “holding the world at bay while Joseph invented the universe.“
When I started to see what kind of man Joseph was, I realized that I had to recalibrate the type of energy that I manifested as a tour manager. I came up in the music biz with what I call “the NYC rock-n-roll asshole” mentality. The watchword was always, “Hit the other guy before he hits you.” It was brutal but necessary when it seemed that the other guy was always mobbed up or copped up or gunned up or some combination of the three. He did not want to pay me my money but I wasn’t going to leave town without it. A showdown seemed inevitable.
But what did that mean when you represented a guy who had come through apartheid South Africa? In SA, life and limb really were on the line and Joseph had seen the worst of it, seen his brothers murdered before his eyes, and still came through with the joyous light of God in his eyes. “We all want the same thing,” he would say. The people wanted to hear him sing and he was going to sing; he left the rest up to me.
All of a sudden, that thug posture seemed silly, downright funny, even. No, it wasn’t enough for me to lean on concert promoters; I needed to make them see that they WANTED to pay us, they WANTED us to have what we needed in the dressing rooms and they WANTED us to have all the crew and equipment and time that we required. We were ALL going to win; I needed to make them see that the world was going to shine brightly for them when Mambazo came to town. And then I had to make sure that when that day came, it did, that we made that happen. In other words, the job might now demand less muscle from me but I would need a hell of a lot more brains and spiritual fortitude.
This might seem like a rhetorical distinction but it was very real. I saw the way things turned around when I jumped through that mirror. I was moving with Ladysmith Black Mambazo from that old, broken world into the new, better one. People saw this change in me and they responded. (That, btw, has been one of the great lessons of life and of business that I continue to try to learn. Joseph Shabalala could have taught grad-level MBA courses).
Talking about Joseph has my head swimming with memories and I am afraid that if I don’t put some of them down here, they will disappear forever. So here are a few flashes:- Walking around Cincinnati, waiting for the crew at Bogart’s to get the stage ready for soundcheck and hearing Mambazo’s music coming from somewhere. Joseph and I finally find it coming from a house so we ring the doorbell. The woman inside is absolutely floored; she makes us tea (and I am sure she is telling this same story right now).
– Having a day off in Youngstown, OH and going to the movies with Joseph. We are the only ones there and “Home Alone” is playing. Joseph is roaring with laughter.
– Doing a special show for school kids at the Wilmington Opera House. Joseph is doing a call-and-response singalong, first with one side of the room, then the other. Pretty soon, the kids are trying to drown each other out. Joseph actively encourages this. The teachers realize that the rest of the day will be shot.
– Going through Soweto with Joseph and Ray Phiri. Everything I had ever heard about South Africa crystallizes in my mind in one afternoon.
– In the studio with Andreas Vollenweider in Zurich with my African-American then-girlfriend in tow. Joseph has all of the guys, one by one, put their hands over their ears. He then turns to me and asks in mock dead-seriousness, “So, are you going to marry my sister?” Hilarity ensues (for the record, I did).
– Joseph teaching me traditional Zulu dance, his leg kicking way up over his head. Yeah, I’m 20 years younger than him and I can’t do that.
– In the studio with Stevie Wonder, Stevie takes a break from the control room to come into the studio, sits at the piano and plays and sings in perfect Zulu. Global astonishment.
– Countless hours— on buses and airplanes, in recording studios, in coffee shops and concert halls and cathedrals— just ‘xoxo,” as we say in Zulu (this word for “chit chat” is pronounced with a soft click where the letter “x” is. Try it! It is literally the word for “frog” in Zulu, if you can imagine a bunch of the amphibians sitting around a pond then you’ve got it).
– Performing in the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony in Oslo with Mandela and de Klerk (December 1993, my last professional assignment with Mambazo).
Joseph and I stayed friends to the end of his touring days. I would always go see him when Mambazo came to town, usually once a year or so. The last time was around 5 or 6 years ago. I showed up around soundcheck time, slipped in the door and stumbled my way to the dressing room. Joseph was as delighted to see me as I was to see him. We talked and laughed, “xoxo,” as in the old days. I then wandered out and found their manager, my friend (I’m not making this up!), Mitch Goldstein. Mitch told me that Joseph’s mental and physical health were in serious decline; in fact, he was astonished that Joseph was able to maintain a conversation with me. I would have never guessed.
I am delighted to say that Mambazo is as strong an act as ever, actually stronger. As each member of the group has passed through (or, sadly, passed on), he has been replaced by another of Joseph’s sons, one of whom is more talented than the next. They are better dancers, better singers, better representatives of Zulu culture than they were in my day. Joseph’s message carries on.
Joseph’s given name was “Bhekizizwe Shabalala.” Shabalala means, “to disappear.” “Bekizizwe” means “heal the nation.” “Bhekizizwe Shabalala” = “Heal The Nation, Disappear.”
Hamba kahle, mfowethu –
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/arts/music/joseph-shabalala-dead.html
Did I mention how unspeakably meager Joseph’s start in the world was as a rural Zulu in apartheid South Africa? Did I talk about how exquisitely gorgeous and unmistakeable Mambazo’s music was every single time they sang? Did I leave you with the exhortation with which Joseph ended almost every concert, of “P E A C E, L O V E A N D H A R M O N Y” ? I did not. I failed you, reader. Please forgive me. Joseph never failed us.