African Dances Of The Witwatersrand Gold Mines Part 1

Artists

Album Info

Labels: Decca, Gallotone

Top-bottom flipback sleeve. First label/cat number, Gallotone GALP.1032, on center labels; second, Decca (Records) GALP 1032, on sleeve front.

Recorded by:
- Recorded Hugh Tracey (sleeve front)
- recorded by the International Library of African Music (sleeve notes)

Track titles here are from the labels.

Sleeve notes track titles/descriptions:
- A1: Msitso movement. An orchestral introduction (...).
- A2: Chibidu movement - "O ufumile mukoma."
- A3: Mzeno movement - "Hi ngabuta na muchizwe."
- A4: The Inzumba Step Dance (...). Ngeniso movement - "Magijwana." The first of several movements in the dance.
- A5: Incaba No Ncofula". "Come out of your cave, Ncomula".
- B1: The Muchongolo Pipe Dance of the Pedi of the Eastern Transvaal. "Livogho," A set of ten end blown, single note flutes or pipes (...)
- B2: The Muchongolo Stamping Dance (...). "Nuyimiso."
- B3: "Pojo mtagati."
- B4: "Madumwa kalwa machonogola."
- B5: "Akanji Gele Malega." "Go and get a razor."
- B6: "Mlembe Special." A town dance accompanied by two guitars and two penny whistles. Recorded by "The Star Brothers" at Havelock Mine - Swaziland. Mlembe is the Swati name for the Havelock Asbestos Mine. This "gnome-like" music has swept into popularity since 1956.

Photographed By Kalahari Films (H. E. Street) (sleeve)
Copyright Control (labels)

From sleeve notes:
"Dancing is the major recreation of over 100,000 of the African men who travel each year from their tribal homes to work on the Gold Mines of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. Every Sunday, in one or other of the Dance Arenas built in the Mine Compounds, African dances are performed ipublicly by representatives of a dozen or more tribes drawn from a large area of Southern Africa. (...) (Full descriptive details and illustrations of each of the Mine Dances are to be found in a book published by the African Music Society, "African Dances of the Witwatersrand Gold Mines", by Hugh Tracey, photographs by Merlyn Severn.)"