After a month of trying to study Zulu vocal music and the isicathamiya style, I finally made it to an isicathamiya competition this Saturday. I took Laura, a Fulbright scholar from the US, along for the show. Isicathamiya competitions as a rule are all-night affairs, and so we arrived at around 10:15pm, ready for a long night. From the moment we walked in the doors of the YMCA hall where the competition took place, we were, against our will, instant celebrities as the only non-Zulus in the room. We were given front row seats, cups of tea, and periodic visits to update us on what was going on.
Around 2AM, we were flagging and Cynthia, the venue secretary suggested that she talk a friend into driving us back to the backpackers. We were torn between staying until the actual competition and getting some sleep. Ultimately, the friend (not keen to head out on the roads at 2 in the morning anyhow) convinced us to stay. We dragged a few plastic chairs into a corner and improvised chair beds that allowed us at least a couple of hours of uncomfortable napping. The steady rhythms of the singing turned out to be wonderfully soothing, and at our level of exhaustion, pleasantly soporific.
I woke up right on time at 4:30 and we moved back into our front row seats to watch the competition. The groups had somehow managed to spruce themselves up to look even fresher than they had at the beginning of the evening (spotless white gloves helped). They drew numbers to determine the competition order, then took their turns singing to the judge, a large imposing man in a bright white suit and matching white porkpie hat.
The competition follows its own bizarre logic. Cynthia gave us a scoresheet so we could see how the judge would be scoring the performances. I was stunned by what was listed on the sheet. The most important criterion, at 30% of the total, was 'Evening Suit'-- the perfectly matched uniform that inevitably featured identical pocket handkerchiefs and white gloves for all of a group's members. Other categories included 'confidence', 'charisma', and 'modeling'. I'm pretty sure the English translations didn't adequately capture the Zulu terms they were supposed to, but they could only have been *so* off.
Notably missing from the scoresheet was anything to do with the quality of the singing. I tried to ask everyone I could about what seemed like a glaring omission, but never really got a straight answer. As it happened, the group both Laura and I thought was clearly the best musically ended up in 4th place out of 6. The group that won, we both found just OK.
The best explanation I could come up with is that isicathamiya is partly about singing, but is much more about conveying a moral message. The men who sing isicathamiya describe the struggles of the Zulu people and act as teachers of what proper behavior is. We were told several times that we shouldn't worry about our safety, even though we were in one of Durban's dodgier areas. Men who sing isicathamiya, we learned, are clean and trustworthy. So, while good singing lends their message greater credibility, a disciplined walk and appropriately sharp suits do the same thing (and are seemingly valued higher). Once they've taken care of credibility, the most important thing is the message they're singing about. I tried to make friends with a couple of people at the competition who spoke decent English, and was able to at least get the gist of some of the songs being performed. Before the competition, in the more laidback part of the evening, groups were singing songs bragging about their skill, challenging other groups to come test them, and in one case a (apparently) hilarious song about a man complaining his wife mistreated him. But during the competition, we heard songs about pretty heavy themes: the HIV/AIDS epidemic, street kids, Jacob Zuma's legal woes, and one about the exiles who returned home to South Africa in 1994.
This is actually pretty close to how music functions in a traditional, Zulu context. There are, of course, completely silly songs that people sing all the time. But music and dance has a significant social and religious role, and is used to preserve and pass along clan identity, social norms, and respect for one's heritage. Singing well and knowing lots of traditional songs is a good path towards status and respect in Zulu culture. And, while isicathamiya is relatively new on the scene, it carries forward all the values of the ceremonial & traditional music of the Zulus.
0 comments:
Post a Comment