Beginning Kwela?

Whistle
1

Hello all. I’ve had a fascinating time reading through all the kwela related threads here.

It seems a few people on here have had a similar experience to me - stumbling across kwela and thinking this is perhaps the most uplifting, happy, smiley and annoyingly catchy thing I’ve ever heard.

So a few years ago I copied from my father - spokes mashiyane’s ‘king of kwela’ and something called Transkei Special ‘Accordian mbaqanga’ (also instrumental and similar to king of kwela but with rhythms/melodies played on accordian instead of tin whistle). I’ve been wearing out the cassette ever since.

Anyway, I’m not very musical (I can strum a few chords on a guitar) but today I took the plunge and went to the music shop and bought a tin whistle. A Bb Generation for £2.95!! The same price as a cheap bottle of cider!, but I bought it anyway. So here I am, king of the kwela is to my whistle what Freebird was to my first guitar, unachievable but fun trying and something to aim for.

I believe some people here do play kwela so any advice would be great.

I have a couple of beginners questions.

  1. Have I got the right instrument? From reading here it seems Bb is the main key for kwela. The music shop I went to had a display of generation tin whistles in all keys and in order. It was a little confusing as the lowest was Bb and the highest was Bb, both the lowest and the highest were the same size. I bought the lowest one but I’m now wondering whether the shop was confused and there should have been are two different Bb whistles an octave apart?

Does a Bb whistle sound ok when played along with recordings of Spokes? Is king of kwela generally in Bb?

  1. For those people who’ve played kwela, do you have any music written down? There seems to be a complete dearth of written kwela music, anywhere, ever.

I don’t really understand how these things work but I’m guessing people who are comfortable playing the tin whistle play songs by ear or play from memory. It would be great if anyone had been able to write down some kwela music, even just chord progressions.

Any help/advice would be much appreciated.

There seems a real gap in the market for a talented tin whistle player to write down some of these songs :slight_smile:

2

Can’t help with most of your questions (maybe I can…I’ll have to think a bit and get back to you), but I’d be interested in any answers you receive!

I’ve got the Spokes recording…I’ll see if I can transcribe some sheet music.

-Brett

3

Bb is the right key, but according to Dave Woodhead, south african musicians had a distinctive way of playing the whistle turned sideways and up against their cheek that had the effect of lowering the sound by a semitone, meaning that many recordings are actually in A rather than Bb.

A search on this site will turn up a link to the interview in which he explains how this works.

I have a couple of Lemmy maboso tracks in MP3 that I’ve been sharing with other members; if you PM me with an off-list email address you can receive attachments on, I’ll send them to you.

4

It would be cool if someone would/could make a backup recording with just guitar and drum to play melody along with. You can find these for jazz/blues (I remember having a couple in my sax playing days), but I’m not sure if any would match up quite right with Kwela…

-brett

5

In South Africa, the penny whistle that brought about kwela was the Hohner whistle which is no longer made. They were available in 3 keys only, Bb, C and G (low) I would guess that if the music you have is pretty old, it would be in one of these 3 keys and the most likely being the Bb or the “bee bee” as it was traditionaly called. As stated, the traditional style of play was to stick the whistle into the mouth right up to the window and manipulate the sound, thus sharpening or flattening it at will. On speaking to Elias Lerole (of Tom Hark fame) he said that any good kwela player could manipulate the tuning to their liking with this method, and that the whistle did not need to have good intonation in order for it to be played well and with other instruments.

My suggestion would be to get a slow downer (windows media player 10 does it) to get the tune down and then slowly speed up as you get more confidence. I have always found it very difficult to get that same feel from the tunes as the traditional players have a naturally built in “happy rythm” and coming from a western tradition, it breaks the mold. You will notice lots of repitition which helps.

I do not know of any sheet music for kwela - I think it kind of goes against the grain for this genre, but I do have a couple of MP3’s I could mail you if you like. Just drop me a PM.

6

Dave Woodhead plays on D, C abd Bb whistles on various tracks on The Positively Testcard’s various albums. Check them out, they have a website, play Kwela gigs, and are perhaps currently the only live Kwela performers in the world - or at least in the UK.

I think the Generation display rack you saw is just that - it doesn’t indicate the range from high to low, it just holds the whistles.

The Generation whistles come in (from low to high): Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G.

The G is so small I can hardly play it, my fingers can’t cover the holes, and anyway it’s very shrill.

Other manufacturers make lower whistles than Bb, and then you can get into the realms of A, Low G, Low F, Low D and even Low C. I don’t think a lower Bb would fit human hands, though you do hear of Bb flutes, so maybe.

Dave Woodhead, after much experimentation, plays Shaw brand whistles. They’re more expensive than Generations at £10-12 for a D, but a lot less than some makes, and come in a variety of keys.

If you have a D, C and Bb whistle, you should be able to play along with any kwela track.

I don’t think Kwela is written down anywhere, it’s an aural and spontaneous tradition.

7

Perhaps UK. Certainly there are a number of groups in South Africa still carrying on the tradition.

Absolutely.

8

Thanks for all the information and help.

It’s good to know I have the right instrument :slight_smile:

The Positively Testcard interview here was very helpful. I’ll see how far I get with those chord progressions. I’ll try a slowdowner too.

I take the point that this is a very unwritten form of music. A couple of hours today spent searching around the internet didn’t yield much.

I did stumble across one interesting thing. A photograph of a tin whistle player taken by someone on holiday in South Africa - http://www.rocinantestravels.com/Gallery/008_South_Africa/pages/CRW_7586.htm. It definately shows the whistle is turned to one side with the lips touching that hole on the top.

s1m0n, Impempe - thanks for the offer, I’ll pm you with my email.

I have one Lemmy Mabaso mp3 called ‘slow blues’ but anything else would be great.

Other than that song and the music I mentioned in my first post, I have these as MP3s-

marabi kwela - West Nkosi
mafikizolo kwela - mafikizolo
banana ba rustenburg - spokes mashyane (from the Township Jazz and Jive album)
tom hark - Elias and his zig-zag jive flutes

All good songs, I think only tom hark has tin whistles though.

If any of those are of interest to anyone, please let me know.
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9

Does anyone know where or how to buy any of The Positively Testcard’s discs in the US? I’d really rather purchase for download, but I’d consider buying a CD also.

So far, Sterns and Amazon.uk are the only places I’ve found to purchase from. I just can’t quite achieve that level of brash American consumerism that allows me to spend $24 plus shipping (after currency exchange) for a CD.

Do any of the various whistle vendors sell TPT discs?

10

You could try

here
http://www.earthvibemusic.com/cdinde.htm

or here
http://www.shop.edirectory.co.uk/roots_music/pages/moreinfoa.asp?pe=IIAJEAQ_+&cid=826

I’ve no idea how legit they are. Perhaps email them first.

The first link has one track from each album available as a free MP3.

11

Thanks tren.

Looks pretty much the same. £12 from the first vendor and a better price, but only one disc from the other.

It’s hard to imagine that they don’t have a contract for distribution in the U.S.

12

I have both a Bass Bb and Bass A from Colin Goldie. I can play both with my finger tips. Not really fast since I don’t spend a lot of time on them. When I do though, I can play pretty well.

Doc Jones calls me Mr. Orangutan Hands. :laughing:

13

bump

Well, I’ve had a go at transcribing the first song (called Meva) on spokes mashiyane’s ‘king of kwela’ album, with the help of some audio recognition software and a lot of head scratching.

This is my best attempt as a midi file -

Download Meva01.mid (link valid for one month, click through the adverts)

If you don’t have a copy of the song you can listen to a sample of it here.

It seems most music software packages import midi files and you should then be able to print out sheet music. (If you don’t have any midi software you could try MidiNotate Composer or many others.)

Windows Media Player will also play the midi file.

I think it sounds ok, but then I’m not the most musical person in the world. It’s close I think but with a few rough edges.

It would be good if some of musical types here could have a listen and let me know what you think. I haven’t tried to play it yet as I’m more at the Baa baa black sheep level. It would be good to know if what I’ve written down is at least vaguely playable.

Also, if anyone knows a good way to share sheet music (and/or perhaps display sheet music on html web pages) please let me know.

A few notes-

-I’ve done it in Bb as that’s the whistle I have. I’m not convinced the recorded song is in Bb, I think it’s a bit higher, perhaps A.

-The time signature is 3/4. Again I’m not sure about this. The melody just seemed to split up more easily into threes. But then the guitar backing sounds a bit more like 4/4. I can’t really tell.

-The melody part has ‘Flute’ as it’s instrument. There is a midi ‘Whistle’ sound which is awful. The midi flute is quite close to spokes’ sound.

-I’ve added a simple guitar track that just cycles through IV-I-V-I (Eb-Bb-F-Bb). You can always turn this off or adjust it’s volume.

14

Has anyone been able to try out that midi?

It’s just I’m trying to transcribe a small number of kwela songs, as best I can, and I don’t want to repeat any mistakes.

Any feed back, or suggestions of songs to transcribe, would be great :slight_smile:

15

Hi , thank’s all of you for all the informations about Kwela music , you’ve been very helpfull !

I’ve been a fan of south african jazz for many years , some of my favourites artist are Abdullah Ibrahim { Dollar Brand) , Hugh Masekela , Jazz Epistles , and many other , so after listening few samples of kwela music I’ve immediatly fall in love with this music !

A good music to listen when you wake up in the morning !


Manuel

16

Tren, I should have given you this head’s up ere now; if you’ve been anlysing any of the tracks I sent you, be aware that I suspect the belt that drives my turntable; I think that the recordings I sent might be both slow and low by an undetermined amount.

A few months after I made the kwela recordings, I compared run times of another recording I was making, and calculated that to come out equal, I needed to speed my MP3s up by about 107%. I don’t know if the earlier recordings were that slow, or even if they were slow at all.

17

Hi s1m0n,

I’ve have used your recordings which have been very helpful.

I’d say they’re better than what I have. Probably much better than me playing my bashed up tape out loud to my computer, while drinking coffee really quietly in the background.

It’s hard to tell about the speed as I don’t totally trust my tape. It was recorded from the CD but it hasn’t really been taken care of and it has been played alot. Your recording of Meva comes out at about a semitone lower (slower) than mine.

In the end, I don’t think it really matters as you can change the key to whatever you want, the main thing being the notes are more or less right relative to each other. I think that Meva midi is fairly close :confused:

I’m now looking for another song that I like and, most importantly, is as simple as possible. I may try London Special - lemmy mabaso, or another of spokes’ songs.

18

Darn

19

Oops

20

Does anyone know of any Kwela that is available for purchase and download? I wanted my students to listen to a song or two (I’m not picky which songs). But downloading would be ideal. I could probably get more UN troops deployed here faster and more reliably than I could get a CD mailed here.

Thanks,