Conversation with a Strong Man: Ladysmith Black Mambazo's Albert Mazibuko

“Cowards die everyday, but brave men only die once in their life.” - Shaka Zulu

That is what Albert Mazibuko’s father told him as a young boy. When Albert and his brother would walk home at dusk he would swing a small stick through the air and exclaim, ‘Watch me brother, I can hit anything!”

Fast forward fifteen years. It is the mid-1970s and we are in the van with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the all-black, all-male singing group, traveling from their home in Pinetown on the eastern coast of South Africa to Johannesburg, three hours further inland. The group really likes when Albert drives; they are more relaxed. Albert doesn’t really have much fear. It is nighttime and illegal for them to travel. They are black Zulu men living under Apartheid white rule, and they are being pulled over by white police under an African moon. Albert rolls down the window and smiles at the gun pointed directly at his face. He is not afraid. They have done nothing wrong. They have been asked to sing in another part of the country. They sing about love, forgiveness and harmony. All of this is terribly confusing to the police as the group is ushered out of the vehicle and into the harsh lights of the roadblock. Then Joseph Shabalala, the founder and leader of Ladysmith, the dreamer, Albert’s cousin, whispers to the other men, ‘Okay, now we sing for them, now we do our magic!’ And arising from these men is one voice made out of eight; eight men singing in perfect harmony. Two bass, three tenor, two alto, Joseph leading them. They sing about the rain, the pale cliffs where people sleep, the king of kings, and of their desire for unity. It is breathtaking.

When they finish, the police captain walks forward and shakes each of their hands. ‘You are free to go,’ he says, ‘just make sure to stop at my station on your way back and I will write you a pass so you may travel safely through next time.’ Back into the van and back into the night they go, free for now in a country that still has twenty more years of institutionalized racism. Eventually Apartheid will be abolished. Three years after that, in 1994, Nelson Mandela, recently released from prison, will be elected the first black president of South Africa. On his request, Ladysmith Black Mambazo will be there, singing songs of peace, harmony, love and unity.

It is 2018 and cold in Binghamton, New York. I am about to interview one of my heroes, Albert Mazibuko, senior member of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Even if you don’t think you know who they are, you probably do. They came onto the world stage in 1986 when Paul Simon featured them on his album Graceland, which won the Album of the Year Award at the Grammys, sold more than 16 million copies, and is often cited as one of the greatest albums ever made. Graceland started the trend of ‘world music’ and marked a shift in modern global culture, often referred to as ‘fusion.’ If you watched TV in the 1990s, you may also recall a famous Lifesavers ad (“Lifesavers, yummm”): that was Ladysmith, too.

It is a few days before the group is awarded their fifth Grammy, Best World Music Album for Shaka Revisited. I call Albert’s hotel in Eugene, Oregon and they patch me through to his room. After one ring the phone is answered. “Hello?” “Hello, could I please speak with Albert?” “Speaking!” “Hey Albert, how are you?” “I’m very well Joseph, how are you?” How did he know my name? He must have been expecting me. His voice is sweet and strong, the heavy accent music to my ears. I bumble my way through a Zulu greeting and realize that I am nervous. Tip #1 when interviewing one of your idols: try to sleep more than two hours and don’t drink more than 4 cups of coffee…

JOSEPH ALSTON: Congratulations Albert on your two new albums being nominated for Grammys [Ladysmith has won four Grammys and been nominated eighteen times]. Being that one of them is called Songs of Peace and Love For Kids and Parents, I wanted to ask you about your childhood. I understand you were raised mostly by women?

ALBERT MAZIBUKO: Yes, most of my life I was with women. My mother and my grandmother, they were always a good influence, they gave me comfort. On the other side, my uncle and my grandfather, they were kind of harsh. They wanted to make me tough, a strong man. But my grandmother taught me to be a man who does all the good things, like taking care of your family, to never back down, to just believe in yourself, there is no one better than you. That was so important to me. And I wonder now, how did they know to say these things so I would remember them when I’m old? But I think they knew that when a mind is still soft, if you plant something there it will stay forever.

JA: Your grandmother and Joseph Shabalala’s mother were diviners. What does that mean?

AM: Yes, they were. Their role is as spiritual people. The people who communicate with our ancestors. So, they have a special task of receiving the message of the people who have passed away. People come to them if they have a problem because they are able to tell you something you didn’t know about yourself. And as a diviner, everyday before they go to sleep, they have to sing for the spirits they have, and then they start to come down. I think it is like entertainment for them. That is how I was introduced to the music. It was a time I was looking forward to everyday. My grandmother would say, ‘Now we are going to do some singing,’ and we would sing and beat the drum and then we would dance, and then we would go to sleep.

JA: That’s a great way to go to bed!

AM: Yes! And it would give you very good dreams too.

JA: You live in Pinetown. Have you always lived there?

AM: We mostly live around Pinetown now but our families are from Ladysmith, about three hours’ drive away. We left Ladysmith seeking jobs, and in Pinetown there are a lot of factories. Also Durban, which is near Pinetown, is a harbor with a lot of work for people. So, we snuck from Ladysmith and went to Pinetown, because we were not allowed to go there, but fortunately we succeeded. And then when we went there we got somebody to get us an ID, to lie to the government that we had permission to be there. And so we were able to work in Pinetown, but on holidays we always went home.

JA: Do you remember the first time you met Joseph? [Shabalala was the founder of Ladysmith Black Mambazo but recently retired from the group with his son Thamsanqa taking his place.]

AM: Oh yes! Absolutely! Even though we were related to each other and I would see him on the farm, it wasn’t until Durban when I wanted to join his group that I remember him well. It was two times that I remember. The first was 1967 and my brother and I went to him because he had this group already, and we wanted to try to join. But the other guys in his group said, ‘We are too many, there is no space for you.’ We were disappointed, but Joseph was very polite and said, ‘Ok, do you know how to sing?’ I said, ‘Yes, we can sing,’ and so we sang a song that everyone knows, and afterwards he said, ‘Oh you sing so beautifully!’ He asked us to come to the next rehearsal but we didn’t go back because we thought the other guys they didn’t like us very much. Our time came, though, in 1969. I remember that day. It was mid-morning on Sunday and Joseph just showed up to the place we were staying at with our uncle. When he got there we said, ‘Oh Joseph come in!’ and he talked to our uncle saying, ‘Uncle I came to ask your permission to take my brothers here and rehearse with them. Because I’ve had a dream that I dreamt of my grandmother telling me that they are the ones that are going to help me achieve what I want with music.’ We were so happy! I remember I stood up and I said, ‘Wow! This is wonderful! You’re going to teach us now?’ And he said, ‘No. I am going to teach you but sit down because it’s not a type of singing that you’re used to. I want something different. The other group thinks my teaching is crazy. I want to write new songs, a new way of singing which I learned from my dream. I slept and dreamt of people singing for me.’ My brother and I said, ‘Wow, as long as you have time you can teach us whatever you want.’ I remember that day he taught us two new songs and a new way of singing! He stayed with us until the sunset, and when he left we were so excited! The following day he came back and we have never stopped.

JA: Wow. It must have been hard to sleep that night!

AM: Oh yes.

JA: I watched Eric Simonson’s documentary on Ladysmith, On Tip Toe, and I was struck by a particular scene. It was showing the singing competitions in Pinetown that Ladysmith started out in and it said they started at 10pm and wouldn’t be over until the next day! Can you tell me why? Was that the usual way?

AM: Yes, that was because those groups had to travel from far, far away and there was the law at that time. There was a curfew. After 10 o’clock you were not allowed to be outside, so once we were inside the building we had to stay there all night until the following day.

JA: And these contests were singing contests in the Isicathemia tradition. That tradition come about from the mine workers?

AM: Yes. These workers were only men, taken from all different regions of Africa. In the mines, they had the ‘kompons’ (hostels) they were staying in, and because there were no women, the men wanted something to do to kill the time and entertain themselves. You know the boredom when you aren’t doing anything? So, in the evening they started to get together and they said, ‘We can sing,’ and sang the music that they used to sing in their homeland. They were all from different tribes. You had Zulus, Xhosa, Ndebele, Swazi, all of them. But when all the different groups came together to sing it was to entertain themselves, not for competition. For the Zulu people when they sing, it is not complete until they do their dancing, which is a stomping dance. When they were doing their dancing though, it was making kind of a banging because most of the houses at that time had a void underneath, so if you stomp it makes a lot of noise. The security guards said, ‘No, you are not allowed to make that type of noise here.’ So they said, ‘Okay, we are still going to do the dancing but we are not going to stomp anymore.’ When they brought that style of dancing back home on holidays, the people at home said, ‘Wow, you are not stomping anymore! Now you are just touching the floor.’ It means you are tip-toeing. So the music, it became Isicathemia. Later, when they invented these competitions, they said, ‘In order for us to make this thing interesting, let’s compete, that way we will be able to shape it out ourselves and make our music better.’

JA: Your other new album, Shaka Zulu Revisited: 30th Anniversary Collection, also nominated this year for a Grammy, is a re-recording of your first album, Shaka Zulu, with Joseph’s son Thamsanqa singing the lead voice. It is named after the famous Zulu king. I was wondering why you named this album after him and what he signifies for Ladysmith?

AM: You know, Shaka, he is the person that did a lot to bring together all the small tribes in South Africa, making the one Zulu nation. So, when we grew up, our fathers and our grandfathers, they were telling us about how good he was and how protected he wanted the Zulu people to be. We all took inspiration from them, from his name. So, when we recorded these songs, which were produced by Paul Simon in 1987, we said, ‘Let’s take this album and name it after him; it’s going to be a powerful and also uniting force.’ –because Shaka Zulu’s aim was to unite the Zulu people and make them one big strong nation. That was our message. And fortunately, that album won us our first Grammy. It was wonderful!

JA: Ladysmith had an amazing relationship with Nelson Mandela, even traveling with him when he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Could you tell me a bit about that experience?

AM: You know it’s one of those things when you think about you say, ‘Wow, this was a big dream come true.’ I remember when we met him for the first time it was very brief, at his birthday party in 1990 in Johannesburg. We were invited and we sang there, and he came to the stage and joined us, shook our hands and said ‘Your music has been a great inspiration for me while I was in jail. It still gives me hope that South Africa will be a free country one day.’ We were so taken aback and said, ‘Wow! He has been listening to our music!’ He told us, ‘From now on I want you to come with me everywhere I go because I want people to hear this powerful music.’ After that we received an invitation from him saying, ‘I am going to Norway to receive my Nobel Peace Prize and I want you to come with me.’ He requested we sing two songs at the ceremony when they do the presentation, but they said, ‘We’ve never had a group that sings here and we can only give you four minutes.’ We realized we’d have to combine these two songs. The first song was ‘King of Kings’ and the other song Joseph had written to encourage all the political organizations in South Africa to come together and solve their problems. We rehearsed those and when we went there, we just stood there and the people were sitting down, all with the black suits and white shirts and then the bowtie. Mandela himself was in the suit, in the front row with one of the Prime Ministers of South Africa. We sang this song in exactly three minutes, thirty-eight seconds! Then Mandela stood up alone, put his fist up in the air and said, ‘Black power, black Mambazo.’

JA: Wow.

AM: So emotional.

JA: And did they cheer for you?

AM: Yes, yes. It was wonderful. Wow, it was amazing! And so after that he said, ‘On my inauguration day I want you to be there and you have to sing those same songs before I stand up as the South African president.’ And so it was a great one. After that we met him in many places and I was always amazed that he had a sense of humor. He’d tell jokes, and he’d tell all the stories, very deep stories, but the way he’d tell it, the way that it makes you feel. You know he was an entertainer and a wonderful person. I think we were so blessed to have known him.

JA: I recently saw a portrait of Ladysmith taken by the famous photographer Mark Seliger, and he managed to portray the groups quality of strength very well. The shot was taken down low, your chests are out, some fists are clenched. And none of you are really smiling, except for Joseph. It almost looks like the photographer asked you all not to smile, but Joseph couldn’t help himself. [Albert laughs.] The Zulu name Joseph’s mother gave him translates as ‘A man who has power’. It seems to me like maybe that was where the source of his power comes from. I wonder from your perspective, where do think that sense of power came from?

AM: You know, I think he was born like that. Because Joseph is a person that is a prophet. Sometimes things would just come to him. I have spent a lot of time with him and he even surprises me. He can tell you something you didn’t know, and he can be transformed, in front of you, and then he becomes another person. I think that’s what his nature is, god given to him. It was grown in him. I remember I was talking with the people who grew up with Joseph and they said he did that all the time as a young boy. They would be doing something which was not right and he would tell them, ‘Now let’s stop. Someone is going to come and we are going to get caught.’ And if they didn’t listen to him they were going to get caught. It happened even when he was with the group. He was always doing things and he would tell us something was going to happen and it always happened. That just grows with him all the time.

JA: I remember something you once said about living and growing up under Apartheid, about the fear and sense of despair: you said you don’t live with fear. And you were telling the story of performing at shows and people were there to assassinate you, and you would have your driver walk through the crowd trying to spy them out. But you weren’t afraid. I wonder, has it always been like that, in your being, being fearless, or was that something that grew with time?

AM: I think it’s because the place we grew up in, it was a place that was challenging all the time; the life was challenging in every way. So we were told that you should be brave in order for you to survive. I remember all the time my father used to tell me what Shaka Zulu would say, ‘A coward dies everyday, but a brave one dies only once.’ And I said, ‘I don’t want to die everyday! [laughter] I want to die when my time comes!’ So, I said, ‘I am not going to allow anything to frighten me. I’ll be brave whatever happens to me.’ I remember I used to walk in the night with my brother, we were very little boys, maybe I was about eight and he was about ten. We would sing all the way and trade our sticks, and when we’d get home I would say to my brother, ‘With this small stick you gave me do you think I can hit something or not?’ And he would say, ’Yes, we can beat anything with our sticks!’ That kind of braveness, I think it helps us all the time. After the riots in 1976, Mambazo would like when I was driving because I was the one who would never get afraid. When we were stopped and they are pointing the guns at us, I was very calm and relaxed because I would never allow something to frighten me. It even showed those people that we have nothing to fear, we have nothing to worry about. They would say, ‘Ok, you are so relaxed, you are not afraid that we have guns?’ I’d say, ‘No, we are not fighting with anyone. Why should we be afraid? We are singers. We do what we do best. We sing for the people to stop fighting and so they will come together.’ And they would say, ‘Ok, be careful on your way.” So, we became friends with those soldiers at the roadblocks because we have nothing to hide, our music was about peace, and we are not singing anything that is provoking people to fight. No. Instead we said, ‘Lets sit down and find a solution to the fight.’

JA: You have been accused of not being political. But I think that your message of peace, love, harmony and forgiveness is one of the most radical political statements a person can make, although perhaps one of the hardest. How do you feel like your message is going over here in the States? And how do you feel about bringing that message to this country now?

AM: You know I think our message of love, peace and harmony is more relevant in this time. Because if you look at the world, so many people are not trying to come together and solve their problems in peace. Sometimes people they say, ‘If I talk bad with someone else that will solve the problem.’ But it doesn’t help anyone. We believe that peace is more powerful than the other things. That is what I think. But if I had a message for the American people, I would say America is a country that has all the world’s envy. Because it’s a powerful country. Because what they’ve done is something that all the world is trying to do. To unite. It’s called the United States. They were able to take all the states and make it one country. So even in Africa, people are dreaming about that, to just bring Africa together as one country. So, if you are like that you should try to protect that, and try all means, avoid everything that is going to fight them, and grow in being united because that is powerful. It is beautiful. We all want to be like that. We all want to be united. United is power. Divided, you are weak.

JA: Albert my last question is because I heard somewhere that you like country music. Is that true?

AM: Yes, yes I do. I like the older country music. Like Don Williams, and Dolly Parton. But even now when I turn on my TV and find the country music channel, I stay there, I never change it.

Albert and the rest of Ladysmith Black Mambazo will be performing at the State Theater in Ithaca, NY on Thursday, Feb. 8th. You can get tickets online at dspshows.com. They cost about as much as a fancy salad. I have seen Ladysmith twice and they changed my life each time. I hope you get to hear them and experience what they bring to this world. Be brave.

More info on Ladysmith Black Mambazo can be found at mambazo.com.