Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Ladysmith Black Mambazo, South African music group founded in 1964 by Joseph Shabalala, a young musician who hoped to bring new interpretations to traditional Zulu music. The a cappella group’s compelling performance style was a unique melding of indigenous Zulu songs and dances with South African isicathamiya, a soft, shuffling style of dance accompanied by ragtime-influenced choral part-singing.

The name that Shabalala chose for the group—Ladysmith Black Mambazo—was significant on a number of levels: Ladysmith was the name of his hometown (Ladysmith was renamed uMnambithi in 2024), Black represented the black oxen that were the strongest on the farm, and Mambazo, from the Zulu word for “axe,” symbolized the group’s ability to cut down the competition. Shabalala recruited several relatives to join the ensemble, and in 1970 a radio broadcast led to the group’s first recording contract. In 1973 Ladysmith Black Mambazo released Amabutho, the first African album to reach gold record status (25,000 sold). The group gained worldwide recognition from its 1986 collaboration with American singer-songwriter Paul Simon on his Grammy Award-winning Graceland, one of the best-selling albums of the 1980s, and in 1987 Ladysmith Black Mambazo won its own Grammy in the best traditional folk recording category for the album Shaka Zulu.

By the turn of the 21st century, the group had recorded more than 30 albums, including Induku Zethu (1987), Inala (1987), Liph’Iqiniso (1994), and In Harmony (1999), which altogether had sold more than 30 million records around the world, establishing it as the best-selling musical group in Africa. Its music also appeared on the soundtracks for such films as Coming to America (1988), A Dry White Season (1989), Cry the Beloved Country (1995), and The Lion King II (1998). Ladysmith Black Mambazo performed in Steppenwolf Theater Company of Chicago’s staging of The Song of Jacob Zulu, a play about the apartheid era in South Africa. The production premiered in Chicago in 1992, opened on Broadway in 1993, and was nominated for six Tony Awards, including best music for a play. Other notable performances included the 1987 Graceland World Tour, two concerts at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, and a 1996 concert organized at the request of South African Pres. Nelson Mandela to perform for the British royal family at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s later albums included Raise Your Spirit Higher (2004; Grammy Award for best traditional world music album), No Boundaries (2005), Long Walk to Freedom (2006), Ilembe: Honoring Shaka Zulu (2008; Grammy Award for best traditional world music album), and Live: Singing for Peace Around the World (2013; Grammy Award for best world music album).