This year has thrown up what feels like the widest variety of music for a long time. Pop, both funky and electronic, thrash metal, indie rock, goth, country, whatever the hell Laibach are classed as, a bit of jazz last time, and now to finish the year, some isicathamiya.
Paul Simon’s Graceland album brought these guys to the notice of a wider audience, and here (with his help on production), they capitalise on that. They’ve got a discography that goes back to 1973 so they’re by no means newcomers to music, but this is another step in the expansion of World Music in the Western consciousness.
If you like the track Homeless, or the intros to Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes or African Skies on the Graceland album, you’ll like this. Because, honestly, it’s all pretty similar once the novelty wears off, and since it’s all a capella there are no instruments to come in a change things up.
That said, once in a while Joseph Shabalala and the gang throw in some very surprising vocal sounds, things that to a Western ear are very strange for the human voice to be making, and these punctuate the otherwise hypnotic hum of their shared voices – if you’re familiar with Graceland you’ll be familiar with the kind of warm comfort blanket of a soundscape that isicathamiya creates.
Quite a few of the tracks are in, I don’t even know which African language (or languages) they’d be in, but some are in English. How Long? uses some classic rock and roll beats created by the heart of the group, and there’s a bit of a gospel feel with tracks like Golgotha and King Of Kings. Which I thought was a little sad as this Christian imagery is a colonial artifact, and not original to LBM’s heritage, but I’m not going to argue with somebody expressing faith in music.
And that brings us to the end of 1987, a very varied year, with a big range of musical genres, a few old friends, and a few (both new and familiar) that surprised me with how much I liked them. Onwards to 1988!
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