South African Choral Music (Amakwaya): Song, Contest and the ...

300 Mrican Eclectic Compositions
I think of a theme then I write lyrics. You can write lyrics if you have got a good theme then you look at
how the lyrics are. Is it a sad lyric, is it a joyful lyric, is it a praising lyric - you see, you judge by yourself.
Then start notating... With most of us after having written the lyrics I can stay for about two, three,
four, five days without touching it anymore. Without notating anything, and still, you know my brains are
still searching what to write now until I get into a gear. With me in particular after writing the lyrics, that's
the poetry of the whole thing, I sometimes, you knO\\', put it on my headboard just like that and sleep. I
know when I wake up something will have come up. More especially when I'm really serious about composing.
Sometimes when I'm driving, more especially when I'm alone, you know from here [Grahamstown]
to Port Elizabeth, it can take me five hours, more especially when I am alone. As I'm alone I'm
singing, new melodies come, then I just stop and I write.
The fact that Leslie Nkuna starts with writing the lyrics is significant. In Chapter 5.3.2
(page 138) I pointed out that all Bantu languages of southern Africa are tone languages. This means
that each word has its individual tone, its melodic shape. Since the relative levels of the syllables
help to determine meaning, compositions have to respect the intonation of words and the sen­
tence-tone in order to communicate the correct meaning of words. A composer who disregards this
fact runs the risk of rendering the lyrics meaningless. Leslie Nkuna gives an example:
Saying: "the bird is flying high". Now you come to notation (sings: so, do re mi fa so) ... Did you realise I
have said the bird. Now the bird would be different. You have started with notes, instead of starting with the
lyrics ... but there is a disadvantage when you try to fit in the lyrics in the notation that you have written.
You see, you may find that what you have written as lyrics may not easily fit into the tune that you have
written. 12
When asked about the process of composing, many amakwqya composers emphasise that their
work is often a result of some form of mystical experience and seldom just an intellectual con­
struct. To Leslie Nkuna, songs sometimes come
in a form of a dream. Which is not very usual, but it occurs in some instances ... sometimes you see a
choir rendering an unknown song. Then when you wake up you sometimes forget what you dreamt
about, more especially the sounds that you heard. But sometimes you still remember the sounds that you
dreamt about and then you sit down and take it)3
This seems to be a common experience for composers from other South African musical
traditions. For the musical compositions of Joseph Shabalala, leader of the isicathamrya group
Ladysmith Black Mambazo, for instance, dreams are a major source of inspiration. 14 In Zulu
thinking and l?elief, dreams are a way of communication with the ancestors, and "composition by
analogy becomes a means of integrating the self in the overarching entity of the ancestral
lineage".15 Like diviners, who derive their power from dreams, a musician communicates with his
ancestors in his sleep and receives songs for them. Isaiah Shembe, for example, did not see himself
as a composer and believed that different heavenly messengers brought each of his religious hymns
to him. Bengt Sundkler reports from his personal communication with Shembe Jr. that Isaiah
Shembe "sometimes had auditions of a girl's voice singing the hymn, and immediately after the
audition he [Isaiah] would write it down".16 Shembe Jr, who also wrote a number of hymns,17
12 Personal communication with Leslie Nkuna, Grahamstown, July 02, 2000.
13 Ibid.
14 V Erlmann, 1991: 289.
15 Ibid.: 302.
16 B. Sundkler, Bantu Prophets in South Africa (London: Oxford University Press, 1961): 194.
17 See .os. 223-26 in the Nazarite Hymnbook.