Queen Nandi: The African symphony

Abstract

Ndabo Zulu and Umgidi Ensemble, is aimed at enabling the necessary inclusion of Nguni traditional themes/songs

to an existing hybrid orchestration and the ability to create a sonic space for these themes, which helped in

documenting the music and the history that comes with it. And thus, expectantly attract more reciters/poets of

these themes. The project is also aimed at eradicating the fast rate at which the Nguni poets are growing extinct

due to the lack of any accurate inclusion system of these poets in modern orchestrations. Folk musicians carry with

them a wealth of information and knowledge, yet there are still no clear set ways to preserve the history in their

compositions or document their melodies accurately.

The Umgidi Ensemble project sought to explore the notion of creating a space for indigenous themes and the poets

that recite them. This was greatly beneficial when orchestrating for this ensemble as these folk musicians

contributed to and became a part of this ensemble. I attempted writing for bow instruments, but it proved challenging to find professional musicians who play these instruments well and understand conventional music notation. Furthermore, there are limitations to conventional music notation when writing for African indigenous instruments or instrumentalists to perform at their optimum level. This observation is from past experiences as a practitioner and a scholar. Eastern indigenous music has always incorporated microtones, but it is still foreign terrain for most practitioners. This phenomenon is influenced by the fact that most western composers do not have these microtones in their repertoire which then creates a lack of awareness for practitioners who are students of western structured curricula. Likewise with African indigenous music, my project seeks to argue that the universal music notation systems (staff notation, tonic solfa) do not afford space of expression for African indigenous instruments/music. Umgidi Ensemble is a musical demonstration of how we can imagine sonic conversations of certain Nguni indigenous instruments and Western conventional instruments. The term ‘Umgidi’ is a Nguni term used for celebratory festivities, ranging from; an initiation of a girl or boy, a wedding ceremony, a thanksgiving event, or celebratory event that has a public invitation and a communal involvement. During all the above-mentioned events there would be a feast for the whole community or village. The feast includes the drinking of traditional beverages and quite central to the celebration is dancing, singing, and playing various musical instruments. Although Agawu might be speaking from a west African perspective – it is worth noting that ‘umgidi’ as a concept is also evident in other cultural articulations throughout the continent. Agawu notes the following: Africans are taught to be cheerful people: Cheerfulness was divided into ten parts; blacks got nine parts, the rest of humanity one. From here it is but a short step to the association of cheerfulness with merrymaking, itself inevitably accompanied by music and dance (2014: 4). As a means of evoking the “umgidi” musical practices, the project aimed at creating an ensemble which explored various instrumentations, sounds, and concepts towards a construction of what could be a possibility of a Nguni music ‘orchestration’. We have seen, heard and recorded these instruments in ensembles with conventional instruments in projects such as Power to the Women (2005), ‘Bafazi Dub’, Mvimbeni (2016) on ‘Modokali’. The focus of this project was a technical and theoretical one, this is to say; I will continue to be writing music for multiple instrumentations towards alternative modes theorizing and writing for indigenous music. Quite central to this project was the recording which seeks to demonstrate the communal outlooks to Nguni performance. This is to say that there is a level of totality embedded in how most African cultures view music as part of dance, dance as part of poetry. These two aspects have always been codependent in the Nguni tradition and in African tradition, Agawu notes: ‘To say in the beginning dance and music were together, like left and right, man and wife, or front and back, is not to exaggerate’ (Agawu, 2014: 73). Umgidi is a project that still needs more research and will go on for more years because I think it is important for the musical movement in South Africa.