Mzilikazi Khumalo (1932-2021), an iconic figure in choral music in South Africa, rose to prominence as one of Africa's leading composers of art music. This is a work of music history.
Biographical essays on Khumalo's major works, including those for choir, orchestra, and opera are complemented by contextual studies of his compositions and arrangements as well as reflections on his roles as editor, conductor, and music director. Specifically in the context of South Africa's cultural and political transition from Apartheid to democracy, Khumalo's key role in establishing the Nation Building Massed Choir Festival, a multi-racial institution that forged an inclusive space for music, in the 1980s is discussed as evidence of his importance and relevance in South African culture.
Khumalo's major works are studied in relation to contemporary art music, choral composition, and traditional song. These are
UShaka KaSenzangakhona (1996), an African epic, and
Princess Magogo KaDinuzulu (2002), one of the first indigenous African operas. Khumalo's artistic collaborators provide insight into their experiences working on these major projects, documenting the relationships the composer cultivated with his peers. This volume addresses a lacuna in the literature on South African art music which until recently tended to focus on works in the classical tradition and shows that Khumalo is a composer without peer in his synthesis of classical and choral, traditional and contemporary.
André, Naomi: - Naomi André is the David G. Frey Distinguished Professor in the Department of Music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, and Professor Emerita at the University of Michigan, USA, in Afroamerican and African Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, and the Residential College. Her publications include the books Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement and Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman in Early Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera and co-edited collections African Performance Arts and Political Acts and Blackness in Opera. She has worked with opera companies, symphonies, and is a founding member of the Black Opera Research Network (BORN).
Mhlambi, Innocentia: - Innocentia Mhlambi is an associate professor of African Languages at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She teaches African-language literatures, black film studies, oral literature and popular culture, and visual culture. She is the author of African-language Literatures: Perspectives on isiZulu Fiction and Popular Black Television Series and co-editor of Mintiro ya Vulavula: Arts, National Identities and Democracy. She has published extensively on aesthetics, literature, black opera, popular culture, broadcast and print media in South Africa. She is currently researching black opera in post-1994 South Africa.
Pooley, Thomas: - Thomas M. Pooley is Professor of Musicology and chair of the Department of Art and Music at the University of South Africa. He holds a PhD in musicology from the University of Pennsylvania, USA, and degrees from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and Wits University, South Africa. He is the author of The Land is Sung: Zulu Performances and the Politics of Place (2023) and is Editor-in-Chief of Muziki: Journal of Music Research in Africa, and founding managing editor of the open-access journal, Analytical Approaches to World Music.
Somma, Donato: - Donato Somma is a senior lecturer in Music in the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. His research areas include the persistence of opera in Africa, from its forms and functions in the larger politics to the spaces and infrastructures that house it. Underpinning this is an interest in memory and narration and their relation to the fractured histories of South Africa.
