/ARTS & ENTERTAINEMENT/MUSIC-SWAZILAND: Gospel Fever Seizes African Kingdom

By James Hall Reprint | | Print |

James Hall

MBABANE, Nov 20 2001 (IPS) - When King Mswati III, of Swaziland, recorded a track for a gospel album earlier this year, the sensation of a head of state singing holy praises was merely a part of the cresting enthusiasm his country has for the infectious music.

“This was not just a king being indulged when he recorded the song ‘Praise Be His Name’,” affirms Brenda Dube, the manager of a music store in the commercial town Manzini. “Everyone has gospel fever in Swaziland, and His Majesty is riding the wave.”

The gospel album with King Mswati’s track featured is an ensemble effort of local talent produced in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the nearest recording studios are located. No Swazi gospel group has become known internationally, and by most standards they are unexceptional. What is distinctive about Swazi gospel music comes from the depth of its following, in every part of society.

“You hear herd-boys improvising gospel songs while driving cattle along the trails,” says Timothy Myeni, lead singer of the country’s top gospel group Ncandweni Christ Ambassadors. “Even the traditional healers sing our songs when they are doing their magic.”

The intertwining of gospel with traditional life repeats the route Christianity took in the 20th century to become Swaziland’s dominant religion.

In today’s Swazi churches, traditional beliefs have folded into Christian theology, resulting in an African-Christian mix celebrated with the beating of drums and speaking in tongues similar to the shouts of royal praise singers or traditional invocations of the ancestral spirits.

“Gospel music as sung by Swazis is really traditional music with more melody,” says Dube. “The emphasis is more on rhythm, and repetition, almost chanting, the way traditional African music has been performed for millennia.”

Dube also says that what Swazis want from gospel music is not a message about Christianity, but a mood, a celebration. “It is feel good music; loud, the way Africans like it,” she says.

Not a weekend goes by without some gospel competition or concert dominating the local entertainment scene. Gospel music figures prominently in charity events, the most prestigious of which are attended by members of the royal family, all well known gospel music lovers.

The country’s major entertainment awards are the Glory Awards, held annually to acknowledge the public’s favourite performers, such as Melodious Choir and Manzini Choir, all of who perform in the national language SiSwati.

Ncandweni Christ Ambassadors received a gold disc in October for selling 25,000 copies of their album “Umoya Wenkhosi” (Spirit of the King).

The number of albums sold is small by international standards, but is remarkable for a small nation of less than a million people with no recording facilities and only one radio station. That station is government owned, and is dedicated mostly to public service programmes. But its most popular entertainment show, Gospel Hour, is devoted entirely to local groups.

It does not take a professional music critic listening to Swazi gospel groups to discern that enthusiasm rather than great talent is the driving force. No Swazi gospel singer has had professional musical training. Some singers, as one listener observed, have voices only a mother could love.

“But that’s the way Swazis are, we are our best entertainment, even more than the professional groups from overseas, which you hardly hear on the radio,” says Sonnyboy Khumalo, a taxi driver whose radio blasts gospel as he plies the streets of the capital, Mbabane. “Swazis like to hear ourselves talk, and we like to hear ourselves sing.”

This might be why King Mswati, the 33-year-old leader of the tiny Southern African kingdom that bears his family name, was able to record a gospel track without a second thought. Or why his wives, who will number ten by next year after two current fiancees are wed, also stand up at functions and lead the singing of gospel tunes.

“You can be a polygamist, and honour African beliefs, and still like gospel music,” says Sipho Mamba, a student at the University of Swaziland, confirming that it is not a message of Christian ideology that Swazis respond to in the music, but the sense of celebration.

Mamba is doing a study on comparative religions, and he feels Africans’ adoption of gospel music is not completely lacking in theology.

“Swazi Christian sects do celebrate the divinity of Christ, and Swazis see Jesus as their saviour. There is no comparable figure in traditional religion, so worship of Christ is done side by side with ancestral worship. The missionaries were fooled because they just heard the gospel singing,” he says.

Typical reactions to gospel groups at the Somhlolo Festival of Praise, the year’s largest religious gathering, were that gospel music is liked because it “moves me”, “makes me happy”, and “makes me feel closer to heaven”.

Sadly, in a nation where up to a third of the population is HIV positive, according to an AIDS survey conducted by a UN health agency, many Swazis are literally closer to heaven than might ordinarily be the case.

This is not lost to Mamba. “There is this great AIDS epidemic sweeping the country, carrying away so many of us, so it is natural that people’s thoughts turn to the afterlife. Gospel music makes heaven seem welcoming, almost like a party,” he says.

Concurs gospel music fan Thembi Nkhosi, who sings in her high school’s choir, “You always smile when you sing gospel, and you know how much we Africans like to smile. It is our way, so gospel must be our music.”