CITYFOLK MONTHLY - December 2007

The story of mbube—a style of South African vocal music that has been made famous by Ladysmith Black Mambazo—has its beginnings in the story of a now-forgotten black man and former slave from North Carolina named Orpheus McAdoo (1858-1900). A former member of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, McAdoo started his own “jubilee-style” religious singing group in 1888, the McAdoo Jubilee Singers, also known as the Virginia Jubilee Singers. McAdoo covered his secular bets as well, with a group called the Alabama Cakewalkers.

Like the more famous Fisk Jubilee Singers from Fisk University in Nashville, McAdoo’s troupe toured the world in the last years of the nineteenth century, introducing vast numbers of people in Europe, Australia and Africa to the spirituals and other types of religious and folk music sung by black Americans in the southern United States. Many of these touring ensembles existed to raise funds for new schools in the south offering education to recently freed black men, women and children, but McAdoo’s ensemble was apparently a for-profit venture.

The McAdoo Jubilee Singers arrived in South Africa in 1890 and spent most of the decade there. In two separate tours of the British colony—the first of which lasted a grueling five years—McAdoo’s singers visited nearly every corner of the country, performing in farming villages, gold and diamond mining camps, shanty towns outside major cities, anywhere an audience could be gathered.

The African audiences were struck dumb by what they saw and heard. For one thing, very few of them had seen black Americans before. The fact that the visiting Americans were educated, well-dressed and able to come and go as they pleased made a big impact—and possibly a revolutionary one, in some cases—on the African audiences.

The group’s singing made an even bigger impact. The only non-indigenous music the audiences had ever heard before were the hymns sung by Christian missionaries, and the songs of the McAdoo Jubilee Singers—spirituals and folk songs—were nothing like that. The difference between the singing of the earnest missionaries and that of McAdoo’s group was, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. The syncopated, rhythmic, a cappella harmony singing of McAdoo’s troupe touched something deep within the African audiences, in part because the Americans’ music had some similarities to ensemble vocal music within their own traditions, especially Zulu and Xhosa choral music.

McAdoo’s eight years in South Africa sowed the seeds for a new kind of music, as jubilee-style groups sprouted everywhere in his wake. The sound of his group so permeated the South African consciousness that it was still being talked about and imitated in the 1930s in all parts of the country. In the bush country a few hundred miles southeast of Johannesburg, a young Zulu student named Solomon Linda (1909-1962) heard the sound at his mission school and was captivated by it. He formed an a cappella singing group in the mid-1930s, Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds (pictured here with Linda on the far left).

The Evening Birds blended elements of the jubilee style with the Zulu songs they were already performing at feasts and other village ceremonies. After moving to Johannesburg seeking their fame and fortune, Solomon and the Evening Birds began winning the ubiquitous local singing contests—usually winning a goat or a pig as their prize—and were invited by a talent scout/entrepreneur to make some records. At the second recording session, in 1939, the Evening Birds cut an original song written by Linda called “Mbube” (em-boo-bay, the Zulu word for “lion”).

The record featured Linda’s magnificent soaring falsetto, what the Zulus called fasi pathi, above a chanted backing. It was a big hit, reportedly the first African record to sell 100,000 copies. While it never made Linda rich—he got paid 10 shillings for the recording sessions, maybe around $2.50 in U.S. currency at the time—it did make him a major celebrity in the Zulu communities of South Africa. He and the Evening Birds now won virtually every singing contest they entered. Linda’s fame was such within the Zulu world that all subsequent South African male choral music was referred to as mbube in tribute to Linda’s immortal record, though the style is correctly known as isicathamiya.

In the aftermath of “Mbube,” male vocal groups emulating the Evening Birds were all the rage for the next couple of decades. Mbube Roots: Zulu Choral Music from South Africa, released by Rounder in 1987, is an excellent historic introduction to the style, featuring 16 songs recorded between 1932 and 1967 by Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds, the Fear No Harm Choir, the Natal Champions, the Crocodiles, the Bantu Glee Singers, a very early version of Ladysmith Black Mambazo (pictured here) and other singing groups from South Africa.

“Mbube” has been recorded by a number of South African singers over the years, including Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Miriam Makeba (pictured below), the Soweto Gospel Choir, the Mahotella Queens and many others. The song moved out from South Africa to the rest of the world beginning in about 1950, thanks to a strange turn of events that involved Pete Seeger, a clean-cut group of singers from Brooklyn and the entertainment company founded by Walt Disney.

Folk singer Pete Seeger was given a copy of “Mbube” in the late 1940s by his friend Alan Lomax, a folklorist/song collector who was then working at Decca. Seeger loved the record and wanted to perform it with the group he was in, the Weavers. Seeger didn’t know Zulu, so he attempted to copy the lyrics phonetically. What he heard as “a wimoweh, a wimoweh” was actually the Evening Birds singing “uyimbube, uyimbume,” semi-nonsense lyrics that meant, essentially, “you’re a lion, ha, you’re a lion.”

Seeger and the Weavers recorded the song as “Wimoweh,” with Seeger handling the falsetto vocal, and it was one of the biggest pop hits of 1951. A few years later, the Kingston Trio included the song on its hugely successful album Live from the Hungry I (which spent 178 weeks on the Billboard album chart). A young New York doo-wop group called the Tokens recorded the song, with newly composed English lyrics, as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and had a number one pop hit in 1961. Robert John had a Top Five pop hit with it in 1972.

Countless artists have recorded “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” including such disparate stylists as Glen Campbell, R.E.M, the Spinners, Brian Eno, Brave Combo, Bert Kaempfert and Chet Atkins. The song was already approaching everybody-in-the-world-knows-it status when it was used in the Disney mega-hit film The Lion King. Suddenly everybody and their kids knew “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” It surely must be among the most widely known songs on the planet.

Various writers have speculated that if Solomon Linda had known about copyrights and music publishing—and, let’s be honest, not been a black man in apartheid South Africa—he might have made as much as 20 million dollars from his song. Instead, he died a pauper in 1962, buried in an unmarked grave. Linda’s daughters say that he was never bitter about not cashing in on his song. “He was happy,” his daughter Fildah remembered. “He didn't know he was supposed to get something.”

And, in fact, Solomon Linda did get something from his classic record, even if it wasn’t royalty checks. Linda was a Zulu hero, a living legend among his people. He was acknowledged as the best singer of his generation and thousands of young singers across southern Africa wanted to be him. He’s the father of mbube and his spirit is honored and respected whenever anyone sings his song anyplace in the world. That’s one thing money could never have bought for him.

PROFILE: ARTIST ON STAGE

Joe Mullins is a southwestern Ohio native who has been an active Bluegrass performer and radio broadcaster for 25 years. Mullins' experience spans a lifetime, growing up in the industry with his father, fiddler Paul “Moon” Mullins, also one of Ohio’s most notable radio personalities. Joe began working on radio and playing banjo professionally while still in high school in the early 1980s. He toured and recorded nationwide as a founding member of the band the Traditional Grass until 1995, when he purchased WBZI Radio in Xenia, Ohio, retiring from full time touring.

Joe did record and perform on a limited basis with the band Longview, earning Song of the Year and Recorded Event of the Year awards from the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) in the late 1990s. He was honored by winning an Instrumental Recording of the Year award in 2001 from the IBMA for his banjo work on Knee Deep in Bluegrass. Joe was also one of many artists in 2006 sharing Album of the Year honors for Celebration of Life.

He now owns an Ohio network of radio stations, adding WKFI in Wilmington and WEDI in Eaton recently. Joe is on the air weekdays from 2 until 5 p.m. featuring Bluegrass and Old-Time Gospel music on all three stations and web casting at www.myclassiccountry.com. Joe produces many major Bluegrass events throughout Ohio annually, including the Southern Ohio Indoor Music Festival.

Joe is respected as one the top five-string banjo players nationally. He fronts the Radio Ramblers, whom you may remember from this summer's Cityfolk Festival, where they performed and presented a tribute to Moon, who was awarded a 2007 Ohio Heritage Fellowship. On Friday, January 18, the band will open for Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder at Dayton Masonic Center.

FAVORITE LIVE MUSIC EXPERIENCE (in the audience): An Osborne Brothers Concert, 1991 in Binghamton, NY

FAVORITE LIVE MUSIC EXPERIENCE (on stage): performing for the first time in California in 1994 with the Traditional Grass - the crowd nearly pulled up all the Redwoods!

WHAT I LIKE BEST ABOUT MAKING MY LIVING AS A MUSICIAN: The camaraderie between musicians, both in my band and throughout the industry, and sharing a passion for great music with the listener or fan who really "gets it" and understands what we are trying to accomplish.

FAVORITE PASSTIMES: fishing, watching Andy Griffith with my teenagers and eating my wife's cooking

MATERIAL CULTURE: Introducing the Theme for the 2008 Cityfolk Festival: Paper

The Material Culture area, where Cityfolk presents a material culture/folk arts component consisting of displays, lectures, demonstrations and hands-on activities for the whole family, will return to the 2008 Cityfolk Festival. The theme of the area will be paper.

Paper has been an integral part of human life, culture, art and work since it was first manufactured almost 2,000 years ago in China. Because it is portable, flexible, versatile, available, relatively inexpensive and easy to make, paper has been used in all kinds of cultures, in folk arts as well as holiday and religious celebrations. Paper has been, and continues to be, used for practical, decorative and whimsical purposes.

The practical would begin with demonstrations of papermaking, an ancient art that has enjoyed a recent resurgence at both the artisan and fine art levels. Presenters could demonstrate single-sheet papermaking techniques, starting with both recycled materials and fresh organic matter and illustrate such processes as pulping, coloring, screening and drying. Other practical applications that could be demonstrated here include book binding, which has a long tradition in the U.S., and the making of straw hats, many of which are actually made of paper.

Decorative arts that could be displayed and demonstrated include origami, the ancient Japanese art of folding paper into intricate sculptural forms; papier-mâché, a process in which pieces of paper are stuck together with a wet paste and then hardened into such objects as dolls, Mexican piñatas, puppets, bowls, trays, masks, jewelry and countless children’s crafts projects; and woodblock printing.

Blurring the line between utility and decoration, paper cutting is an ancient and many-faceted art form found in diverse cultures; it’s called scherenshnitte in German, wycinanki in Polish, monkiri in Japanese, chien-chih k’e-chih in Chinese and knippen in Dutch. Paper cutting demonstrations could include the cutting of silhouettes, doilies, stencils, paper dolls, the “Tree of Life” from Poland, skeletons for Mexican Day of the Dead celebrations, and numerous items from Chinese traditions, including “window flowers.”

Two modern-day cultural manifestations could demonstrate how paper-based folk arts have evolved. The first is scrapbooking, the wildly popular craft movement that combines nostalgia, creativity and family history with arts and crafts. An even more recent phenomenon is altered books, where found objects, in this case old books, are transformed into works of art by adding illustrations, decorating the pages, making the cover into a collage, obscuring certain words to poetic effect, and so on. This practice is perhaps rooted in the 19th-century amusement that involved gluing photographs of family and friends onto exotic or comical backgrounds.

A final section of the material culture activities could focus on paper used “Just for Fun,” which would include a variety of interactive, family-oriented displays and demonstrations. Presenters in this area would ideally teach festival attendees how to make something as well as provide them materials to actually make a take-home souvenir—possibilities here include paper airplanes, paper dolls, kites, hats and finger puppets.

CULTURE BUILDS COMMUNITY: UD/Cityfolk Partnership Contributes To Community Building In East Dayton

The successful partnership between Cityfolk and East End Community Services has accomplished community building goals in East Dayton using the arts and culture as tools. However, the partnership building efforts through the Culture Builds Community (CBC) program do not end there. The University of Dayton has been another important partner of the CBC program.

Cityfolk first collaborated with the University of Dayton in 2003 with the debut of the World Rhythms Series, a three-part concert series focusing on diverse artistic traditions from around the world. This successful collaboration has featured artists from China, Brazil, Rwanda, France, Belize, the Congo, and Tuva, to name just a few. Now in its fifth season, World Rhythms has an ever larger and more loyal audience.

As World Rhythms grew in popularity, it became clear to the partnering organizations that an opportunity existed to extend the visits of some artists beyond a single performance. In 2006, Jean Paul Samputu, a performer from Rwanda, became the first World Rhythms Fellow. In that capacity, he spent five days in Dayton participating in a wide variety of activities both on and off the UD campus.

“The World Rhythms Series has been a wonderful addition to our programming,” says John Harris, Cityfolk’s Executive Director. “Not only have we been able to bring some of the most respected artists in world music to Dayton, but thanks to our wonderful partnership with UD we’ve been able to deepen the impact of their visits dramatically through the residency program.” One area of deepened impact has been in the local Twin Towers community through the Culture Builds Community program.

Last February 2007, Twin Towers enjoyed one of the biggest, liveliest, and certainly the most diverse celebrations in their community when Samputu & Ingeli played there. The audience was not the only aspect of diversity: the stage was split that evening between Sol Azteca, the community’s Mexican folkloric dance troupe, Mariachi Band Zelaya of Indianapolis, Dayton’s very own Rhythm in Shoes performing Appalachian tunes and dancing, and of course Jean Paul Samputu & Ingeli of Rwanda.

Because Samputu is known for music with strong messages of peace and reconciliation, this celebration became the perfect platform for the community to take a stand against local violence and interracial tensions. Young Latino leader Andy Espino shared the microphone with Diana Watkins, a long-time White Appalachian neighborhood leader. The pair took turns speaking about the need to come together as a community. And while these powerful messages stood as the backdrop for the evening, what engaged the large crowd even more were the connections and relationships built through music and dancing. Rhythm in Shoes performed tunes with calling that got the audience out of their seats and sharing arms and laughs on the dance floor despite the language barriers that would have previously separated them. When Samputu & Ingeli took to the stage, the dancing and high spirits spread to the entire room. The last performance of the evening was a sight and sound to behold when all three music groups jammed together (pictured here). This was the first and probably only time any of us will ever hear a Mari-appal-andan improvisation. Wow!

We distributed a survey at the event to evaluate impact of this work on the community. Of the 73 people who completed surveys, 97% indicated that the event helped them feel closer to their neighbors, 96% indicated that it helped them to feel proud about their own cultural heritage, and 100% of respondents indicated that it helped them to appreciate cultures different from their own. We also received many wonderful quotes from community members indicating what they enjoyed most about the event. One Latina community member wrote (translated from Spanish), “The exchange between cultures, and above all, that we feel like one family.”

Samputu & Ingeli also held workshops at East End Community School, and at two of East End’s youth programs: Miracle Makers after school program and the Youth Development Center. This February the community is looking forward to benefiting from the next Cityfolk/University of Dayton World Rhythms residency with Simon Shaheen, one of the worlds finest violin & oud players. Shaheen will perform at the East End Community Center’s open house on February 12, 2008, for another rare and exciting multicultural community celebration.

TEACHERS CORNER by Kathy Estep

As a retired teacher, I cherish my memories of special teachable moments, those times when I shared a strong emotional bond with students that led to a deeper understanding of a topic by both my students and myself. In the classroom, students build confidence as they analyze and discuss music and images. The critical thinking skills and analytical strategies that they develop with these sources can then be applied to literature, historical documents, and information in other disciplines. The performances presented by Cityfolk offer such teachable moments through sharing cultural events.

The upcoming Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder concert on January 18 provides an opportunity for such a moment. Many students in our area are of Appalachian descent while others come from families that migrated to Ohio from the South or from other countries. Bluegrass embodies this repeated story of place, migration, and dislocation; struggle, continuity and change. It isn’t hard to imagine links between bluegrass music and lesson plans for Fine Arts, Social Studies, Technology, or Language Arts. As a matter of fact, the International Bluegrass Music Association has a yearly Bluegrass Lesson Plan Competition with a cash award. Samples of those plans are available online along with information on IBMA mini-grants as well as other teacher resources. Discover Bluegrass offers up an overview history as well as “features” particular songs and artists including Ricky Skaggs.

Bluegrass roots run deep in Dayton, too. WYSO presents "Banks of the Ohio: Music from the Homeplace of Bluegrass" hosted by Fred Bartenstein, in collaboration with the International Bluegrass History Museum. Bartenstein explains the importance of Bluegrass in the Miami Valley, "It makes sense to broadcast Banks of the Ohio on WYSO. Dayton is very significant in the history of bluegrass music. From the 1940s through the 1960s, this is where rural bluegrass styles successfully evolved into an urban form – like jazz did in New Orleans or the blues did in Chicago. Even today, the Miami Valley has one of the world's most significant concentrations of bluegrass listeners and performers."

The Smithsonian’s PBS series Mississippi River of Song website suggests the following discussion ideas when talking with your students about music:

Cityfolk will offer special ticket discounts to teachers to provide opportunities for bringing students to Cityfolk concerts so you can have your own teachable moments. Be sure you're on our Teacher E-blast list to learn more.

Support Cityfolk and Take a Chance at Winning a Martin D-28 Guitar!

You can support Cityfolk's annual series of concerts, educational programs and the one and only Cityfolk Festival and even win a brand new Martin D-28 guitar in the process!

Thanks to the generosity of the Martin Guitar Company, Cityfolk is holding its first ever Guitar Raffle! You can win a brand new Martin D-28 Guitar (retail price $2,849) complete with a beautiful Martin hard shell case. You guitar players out there know about Martins but for those of you who don't: the Martin D-28 is the standard against which all acoustic guitars in its class have been measured since it was first introduced in 1931. For decades it's been the instrument of choice of too many professional musicians to name.

Raffle tickets are only $20 each and only 250 tickets will be sold. The raffle drawing will be held when all tickets are sold. You need not be present to win.

To order your raffle tickets, call Shelley in the Cityfolk Box Office at 937-496-3863 or click here to buy them online.

PROFILE BEHIND THE SCENES: Yellow Springs Project Heats Up
The Winter Season with the Rhythms of Cuba

Early this year, with support from the Morgan Family Foundation, Cityfolk began planning a residency project that would bring music from around the world to the village of Yellow Springs.The project will go beyond a concert at Antioch College and include public workshops to provide students of all ages with the chance to learn about cultures from around the world. It will also integrate the work of local artists to enhance the efforts of nationally- and internationally-known artists presented. The first programs will take place in the coming months: the first focusing on music from Cuba and the second on dance music from northeast Brazil.

Saxophonist Jane Bunnett (pictured here) and her band the Spirits of Havana will lead off on February 20, 21 and 22. The opening reception will feature Bunnett and her band and the opening of a photography exhibit by Antioch College professor Dennie Eagleson, who has extensively documented the island of Cuba over the past two decades. The reception is open to the public on February 20 from 7 - 9 PM on the third floor of South Hall on the Antioch College campus. Over the next two days the band will conduct workshops and perform for students at McKinney Middle School, Yellow Springs High School and Antioch College. The program will include a free showing of the documentary film Cuban Odyssey, details TBD. Shot in Cuba, it chronicles the music and creative collaborations Bunnett and her husband, trumpeter Larry Cramer have established with musicians from the island.

The culminating event will be a concert by Bunnett and Spirits of Havana at Kelly Hall on the Antioch College campus at 8 PM on Friday, February 22. General admission tickets are $10. This world renowned ensemble, which fuses the infectious rhythms of Afro-Cuban music with the improvisational fire of jazz, features Cuban, American and Canadian musicians all now based in Toronto.

Details are in the works for the second installment of the project. Rob Curto's Sanfona Project—an updated configuration of Forro for All, featured at this past summer's Cityfolk Festival—will be back in town for both workshops and a public performance at Kelly Hall on Friday, April 11 at 8 PM. General admission tickets are $10.

To get your tickets for these concerts, click on the buy tickets button, call 937-496-3863 or visit us at 126 North Main Street, Suite 220 in downtown Dayton. Keep your eyes on www.cityfolk.org for more details on the workshops and community events surrounding these performances.

My daily soundtrack is eclectic, filled mostly with traditional music from around the world and peppered with some favorite pop and rock songs, singer-songwriters and musical soundtracks. When the Christmas season rolls around, I seek out the same kind of variety. I still love to hear the Bing Crosby, Andy Williams and Barbra Streisand standards from my youth, but enjoy mixing up the rhythms with some gypsy jazz, Celtic or Cajun stylings.

Django Bells by the Gypsy Hombres is my current favorite Christmas album. I discovered it by listening to an internet radio station on Live365 a couple of years ago. Every time one of these tunes came on, I found myself turning up the volume and smiling. They put a gypsy swing twist on holiday standards from "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" to "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" that breathe fresh life into each track.

David Grisman's Acoustic Christmas has been a standard in my house since I met my mandolin-playing husband. Grisman's incredible mandolin playing is amazing of course, and the bluegrass-y arrangements are tastefully done. Add in the fact that he's got friends like Bela Fleck joining him, and you just can't go wrong!

Dave Barber often gives musical gifts for Christmas. One year, that gift to me was Christmas Songs by the Eddie Higgins Trio. The CD is perfect to play during holiday gatherings. Every song is interesting and pleasant and the instrumentation will appeal to most folks.

But it's no fun to listen to pleasant standards all the time! For a change of pace, I turn to Brave Combo's It's Christmas, Man! Okay, there are a couple of fairly normal Christmas songs on the album, but they're not the ones I like most! No, the ones that pop ito my head unbidden are the polkas "Must Be Santa" and "Santa's Polka". Both have clever, goofy lyrics set to memorable tunes. I know my now-infant son will love these songs in Christmases to come!

Last but not least is the two-disc set Merry Cajun Christmas, Vols. 1 & 2. This compilation features both standards like "Silent Night" and "Please Come Home for Christmas" and new songs like "It's Christmas Time in Louisiana." One of my favorite tracks is "Randolph, the Rouge Nosed Reindeer" by Justin Wilson. The tune is familiar but Rudolph has been Cajun-ized. Hoo boy! If you're not sure you're ready to add Cajun rhythms to your holiday soundtrack, check these CDs from the Dayton Metro Library's collection.

From time to time, stories on NPR, in the New York Times and in other places catch the eye (or ear) of the Cityfolk staff. These are stories about traditional music, handicrafts, ways of life...stories that deepen our understanding and appreciation for the folkways of the world. We will keep bringing as much of this to Dayton as we can; in the meantime, take a listen to this:

If you find a story that you'd like to share with other Cityfolk ENews readers, please send us the link and we'll put it the hopper for possible inclusion.

You are receiving this email newsletter because you have expressed interest in Cityfolk or in the newsletter itself. If you would like to unsubscribe, please email cityfolk@cityfolk.org with 'Unsubscribe Newsletter' in the subject line. If this was sent to you by someone who thought you'd enjoy it, subscribe by emailing cityfolk@cityfolk.org with 'Subscribe Newsletter' in the subject line.