A Brief Introduction to the Zulu Choirs

Abstract

Black American four-part vocal harmony has roots that predate the Civil War. Although African traditional music is rich in polyphonic singing and its own peculiar harmonies, the simple triad is practically never found. The triad is a fundamental substructure of Western quartet harmony, and perhaps for this reason it has been mistakenly assumed that there are no strong African quartet-singing traditions. In fact, an expansive parallel heritage of four-part vocal music exists in South Africa, its origins dating back to the nineteenth century. Missionaries and white troupes were no doubt the first to introduce four-part vocal harmony on the African continent. During the 1890s an illustrious black musical company, Orpheus M. McAdoo's Virginia Jubilee Singers, spent a great deal of time performing in the country of South Africa. They sang not only for the white colonists but also for the indigenous black population, touching off an outbreak of chorus and quartet groups among black South Africans. At the same time, male quartets were being trained to sing American spirituals, in English, in mission schools and black universities. The same precepts of good harmony-singing practiced at American universities, the same refinement of four even, balanced, and blended voices were being taught to educated Zulus and other South African peoples. An impressive variety of vocal harmony styles are reasonably well represented on South African phonograph records. Literally hundreds of vocal groups have been commercially recorded there since about 1930. The earliest recordings yet uncovered come from a Columbia Record Company session by the Wilberforce Institute Singers of South Africa under the direction of Dr. Herman Cow, a black American educator living in Africa. His group recorded American spirituals in English, sung in the straight spiritual style of contemporaneous American university quartets. In 1930 HMV Record Company brought to London the Zulu musician and composer Reuben T. Caluza and his double quartet, consisting of four men and four women. One hundred and fifty selections were re-