mbaqanga, noun

/(ə)mbaˈǂa(ː)ŋɡa//əmbaˈǂa(ː)ŋɡa/
Forms:
Also (occasionally) mbaquanga.
Origin:
IsiZuluShow more IsiZulu umbaqanga steamed maize bread; apparently first applied to the musical style by trumpeter Michael Xaba, see quotation 1980.
Music
a. A rhythmical popular music style developed in the 1950s, in essence kwela, but with brass instruments in place of penny-whistles and with the addition of a strong jazz element. b. A style derived from this music, but more strongly influenced by traditional southern African styles, and often featuring vocal arrangements patterned after western close harmony singing. c. Loosely, township dance-music in general. Also attributive.
Note:
A forerunner of mgqashiyo and simanje-manje.
Note:
In quotation 1954 the word represents the title of a song, a sign that ‘mbaqanga’ was probably being used in Zulu as the name of the musical style by this time.
[1954 Bantu World 8 May (Suppl.) 11Mayibuye Record Review...Special...Umbaqanga...Golden City Six...They have the same way of using the ‘Majuba’ idiom and yet making it sound disarmingly unpretentious and tuneful.]
1964 Drum Nov. 37There has been the Zulu-idiom, which forms the basis of what is loosely termed ‘Mbaqanga’, or pop jazz.
1969 Post 15 June‘Cats’..are raving mad with mbaqanga, the Soweto originated song-dance mood, which came soon after phatha phatha (touch-touch), a dance tempo popularised by the famous Miriam Makeba.
1977 M. Mzamane in New Classic No.4, 30Mbaqanga dubbed Kwela by white critics who hear the music as nothing more than an expression of the noisy happiness of simple-minded township natives and a gold mine for recording companies.
1980 D.B. Coplan Urbanization of African Performing Arts. 348By the early 50’s the S.A.B.C. was presenting different African languages and musical styles on separate days. Once each week jazz pianist-composer Gideon Nxumalo entertained urban Africans with his regular feature, ‘This is Bantu Jazz.’ He was principally responsible for the wide distribution of the term for the kwela-derived majuba African jazz, mbaqanga. This term, coined by Jazz maniacs’ trumpeter Michael Xaba, originally referred in Zulu to a kind of traditional steamed maize bread. Among musicians, it meant that the music was both the Africans’ own, the homely cultural sustenance of the townships, and the popular working-class source of the musicians’ ‘daily bread’.
1982 Voice 31 Jan. 16Jazz with a strong African accent — the mixture of jazz and township music known as mbaqanga — avante garde, and unique.
1986 Style Mar. 97American Disco-Soul has now crept into Mbaqanga (basic ‘township’ music) in a big way.
1987 Cosmopolitan Apr. 28If I were overseas and I heard a moppie being sung, or a mbaqanga guitar riff, or a klopse banjo, or a township sax, or a mbube choir, or a concertina vastrap, I’d be able to say, ‘Hey, that’s my music, That’s where I come from.’
1987 R. Hyde in Flying Springbok Aug. 29Mbaqanga boasts a variety of rhythmic styles, rich with subtle tribal differences and teasing urban inflections.
1987 E. Prov. Herald 31 Oct. 7Traditional Cape music...Known as moppie and sopvleis and played by klopse (clubs or troops),..is to the coloured community of the Cape what Highlife is to Lagos or what mbaqanga is to Soweto.
1989 Reader’s Digest Illust. Hist. of S. Afr. 418The new music soon earned a new name, ‘mbaqanga’ (Zulu for African maize bread), which by the mid-50s was shouldering aside the older, large jazz bands — and attracting the commercial attention of local record companies.
1990 Weekly Mail 21 Dec. (Suppl.) 31In the local (upper) middle-class environment, an increasing number of young urban whites are perking up to mbaqanga — or what they think is ‘happening’ in the townships.
1993 Sunday Times 11 July 21She gave a concert that ranged from Bach to mbaqanga.
A rhythmical popular music style developed in the 1950s, in essence kwela, but with brass instruments in place of penny-whistles and with the addition of a strong jazz element.
A style derived from this music, but more strongly influenced by traditional southern African styles, and often featuring vocal arrangements patterned after western close harmony singing.
Loosely, township dance-music in general. Also attributive.
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IsiZulu
mbamba, nounn.mbaula, nounn.
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