An Evening With Ladysmith Black Mambazo

The year 2026 marks the 66th anniversary of Joseph Shabalala forming Ladysmith Black Mambazo. It is an impossible story: the teenage Joseph, working on his family farm in apartheid South Africa, allowing himself to dream of creating a group of singers from family members who would perform all over the country. 66 years later his group are a GRAMMY winning global sensation. Tonight they celebrate their journey to the present, singing Zulu songs and songs from Paul Simon’s Graceland, the album that propelled them onto the international stage.

More about the group:

During the dark years of South African Apartheid, Ladysmith Black Mambazo followed a path of
peaceful protest through songs of hope and love. When Nelson Mandela was released from
prison, in 1990, he said that Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s music was a powerful message of
peace that he listened to while in jail. When Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in
1993, he asked the group to join him at the ceremony. It was Mandela who called Ladysmith
Black Mambazo “South Africa’s Cultural Ambassadors to the World.”

The group sings a traditional music style called isicathamiya (Is-Cot-A-Mee-Ya), which
developed in the mines of South Africa. It was there that black workers were taken to work far
away from their homes and families. Poorly housed and paid, the mine workers would
entertain themselves, after a six-day work week, by singing songs into the wee hours on
Saturday night and Sunday. When the miners returned to their homes, this musical tradition
returned with them.

In the mid-1980s, American singer/songwriter Paul Simon famously visited South Africa and
incorporated the group’s rich harmonies into his renowned Graceland album – a landmark
recording considered seminal in introducing World Music to mainstream audiences. This
brought the group to the attention of music lovers all over the world, the beginning of a global
musical career that shows no sign of ending.

After leading his group for over fifty years and approaching his 75th birthday, Joseph
Shabalala retired in 2014, handing the leadership to his three sons, Thulani, Sibongiseni and
Thamsanqa Shabalala. Having joined their father’s group in 1993, their many years of training
had prepared them in ways no others could be trained. Now, carrying their father’s dream into
the future, the Shabalala Family continues the group’s success for all the world to hear.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo is Thulani Shabalala, Sibongiseni Shabalala, Thamsanqa Shabalala,
Msizi Shabalala, Babuyile Shabalala, Gagamela Shabalala, Mfanafuthi Dlamini, Pius Shezi and
Sabelo Mthembu.