Nguni Folk Music

South Africa · 1700s

Dancing Happy Sentimental Epic Sad

Your digging level for this genre

0/8

🏆

Description

Nguni folk music refers to the traditional musical practices of the Nguni peoples of southern Africa—principally the Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, and Swazi. It is rooted in communal life, ceremony, and oral history, and is characterized by call-and-response singing, dense choral textures, and dance-led rhythms.

Typical sonorities include tightly blended group harmonies (often in parallel motion), vocables and ululations, and percussive accompaniment made from clapping, stamping, rattles, and frame or barrel drums. Melodic accompaniment from mouth-bows (such as uhadi, umakhweyana, umrhubhe/umrhubhe) and jaw harps (isitolotolo) is central in some traditions, especially among Xhosa and Zulu musicians, where singers tune their voices to the harmonic overtones of the bow.

Many repertoires are tied to social functions: praise poetry (izibongo) and imbongi declamation, wedding and initiation songs, work and herding songs, and competitive dance-songs like indlamu. The result is a music that is at once historical archive, social glue, and kinetic, dance-driven performance.

History

How to make a track in this genre

Top albums

Afrique du Sud: Le chant des femmes Xhosa

The Ngqoko Women's Ensemble

Shaka Zulu

Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Udondolo

Urban Village

The Zulu Songs of Princess Constance Magogo KaDinuzulu

Princess Constance Magogo kaDinuzulu

Sankofa

Thandiswa

Negro Folk Music of Africa and America

Main artists

Top tracks

Locked

Share your favorite track to unlock other users’ top tracks

Influenced by

African Folk Music

African folk music is an umbrella term for traditional, community-rooted musical practices across the African continent. It is characterized by cyclical structures, call-and-response singing, polyrhythms, and a strong integration of music with dance, storytelling, and ritual. Typical sound worlds include interlocking drum ensembles, handclaps, and idiophones; modal and pentatonic melodies; and timbral techniques such as ululation, vocal hocketing, and overtone-rich instrumental playing. Core instruments vary by region (e.g., West African kora, ngoni, balafon, and talking drum; Southern African mbira and marimba; East African lyres and fiddles; North African frame drums and lutes), but all are used to create layered textures that support social functions—work songs, praise singing, weddings, funerals, and rites of passage. Because it is transmitted orally, African folk music is fluid and adaptive, preserving deep historical memory while continually reinterpreting styles in response to migration, trade, and religious interchange.

Traditional Music

Traditional music is an umbrella term used in the mid–20th century by folklorists and ethnomusicologists to denote community-rooted, orally transmitted repertoires tied to social ritual, work, celebration, and storytelling. Unlike commercial pop or art-music traditions, traditional music is typically learned by ear, varies regionally, and evolves slowly through communal participation. It often features modal melodies, cyclic rhythms, heterophony or unison singing, and indigenous instruments whose timbres are integral to local identity. Lyrics tend to preserve language, history, and collective memory. While the musical practices themselves can be ancient, the phrase “traditional music” emerged to replace earlier, narrower or colonial framings like “folk” or “ethnic” music, foregrounding continuity, locality, and living practice rather than exoticism.

African Music

African music is a broad, pan‑continental umbrella that encompasses thousands of local traditions, court and ritual musics, and modern popular styles from across Africa. It is characterized by layered polyrhythms, cyclical forms, call‑and‑response vocals, timeline bells, and a participatory performance ethos where dance and music are inseparable. While rooted in ancient indigenous practices, the modern category of “African music” took shape in the recording era as regional styles such as highlife, jùjú, Congolese rumba/soukous, and Afrobeat spread beyond their homelands. Over time, electric instruments, brass sections, and later drum machines and DAWs were integrated, producing contemporary scenes like kwaito, Afrobeats, and amapiano. Across the continent, core sonic features include interlocking ostinatos, off‑beat phrasing, and groove‑centric vamps rather than heavy functional harmony. Timbres range from resonant harps and lutes (kora, ngoni) and wooden idiophones (mbira, balafon) to talking drums and hand percussion (djembe, dunun, shekere), with strong regional variation in scales, tunings, and vocal techniques.

Southern African Music

Southern African music is an umbrella for the popular and traditional sounds of countries at the subcontinent’s tip, especially South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, and Eswatini. It blends indigenous polyrhythms, call-and-response vocals, and cyclical melodic vamps with elements absorbed from church hymnody, brass bands, jazz, blues, soul, reggae, and later electronic dance music. Common textures range from powerful choral styles (isicathamiya/mbube) and guitar-driven folk-pop (maskandi, jit, sungura) to horn-led township jazz and dancefloor forms (kwela, marabi, kwaito, gqom, amapiano). Lyrically, it addresses everyday life, love, moral teaching, satire, urban modernity, and political resistance. The region’s multilingual reality (e.g., Zulu, Xhosa, Shona, Ndebele, Sotho, Tswana, English, Afrikaans, Portuguese) is central to its identity and expressive breadth.

Traditional Folk Music

Traditional folk music refers to orally transmitted songs, tunes, dances, and performance practices that arise within communities and are maintained across generations. It typically features simple, memorable melodies; strophic lyrics that narrate local history, work, love, or ritual; and functional roles such as accompanying dance, marking seasonal cycles, or supporting communal labor. Authorship is usually collective or anonymous, and variants proliferate as pieces are adapted to local language, instruments, and custom. While every culture has its own folk traditions, the modern concept of “folk music” was shaped in late-18th–19th-century Europe, when scholars and collectors began to document ‘the people’s’ song as distinct from courtly or commercial music.

Has influenced

Isicathamiya

Isicathamiya is a South African Zulu a cappella choral style whose name roughly means "to walk softly" or "tiptoe," referring to its gentle, precise dance steps and soft dynamic. Performed traditionally by male ensembles, it blends Western hymn-based harmony with Zulu vocal aesthetics, featuring a prominent bass foundation, a flexible lead voice, and tightly coordinated call-and-response textures. The style emphasizes blend, intonation, and choreography: singers move in synchronized, quiet footwork while shaping crescendos and decrescendos as a single body. Lyrics (often in Zulu, sometimes English) address themes of migrant labor life, longing for home, moral instruction, spirituality, and community pride. Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s global success became emblematic of the genre’s polished, serene sound.

Mbube

Mbube is a powerful, male-led a cappella choral style that originated among Zulu migrant workers in South Africa. The word “mbube” means “lion” in Zulu, and the music reflects that spirit: full-throated lead vocals, a resonant bass foundation, and a strong, homophonic chorus. The style typically features call-and-response between a charismatic lead singer and a tightly blended choir, cycling through simple, diatonic harmonies anchored by rich bass parts. Rhythmic unison stepping and coordinated movement reinforce the groove. While celebratory and communal, the songs often carry themes of longing, work, and home—memories shaped by migrant life. Solomon Linda’s 1939 hit “Mbube” became the signature of the genre and the basis for later global adaptations (“Wimoweh,” “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”). Mbube later gave rise to the softer, more hushed isicathamiya style, but it remains a distinct, robust tradition with enduring cultural resonance.

Maskanda

Maskanda (also spelled Maskandi) is a Zulu guitar-driven folk style from South Africa that blends rural traditions with urban migration-era storytelling. It is characterized by rapid, percussive fingerpicking on acoustic or electric guitar, a free-tempo introductory flourish (often called an izihlabo), and narrative vocals that frequently incorporate Zulu praise poetry (izibongo), call-and-response refrains, and social commentary. Typical ensembles add bass, drums, concertina and/or violin, producing a bright, rhythmic groove that supports the troubadour-like lead singer. The music is both danceable and reflective, carrying the feel of the countryside into the city while addressing the lived realities of working-class Zulu communities.

Township Jive

Township jive is a lively, urban South African dance music that crystallized in the apartheid-era townships during the 1950s and 1960s. It blends local street styles with American swing, jazz, and rhythm & blues aesthetics, producing buoyant grooves, call-and-response vocals, and infectious horn or pennywhistle hooks. Characterized by cyclical chord vamps (often I–IV–V with dominant 7ths), a shuffling backbeat, and nimble, treble-forward electric guitar figures, township jive foregrounds movement and collective joy. Saxophones or pennywhistles carry singable riffs, while tight vocal groups deliver harmonized choruses in Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, and other South African languages. The music’s feel is celebratory yet rooted in the daily realities of township life, making it both danceable and narratively rich.

Worldbeat

Worldbeat is a pop-oriented fusion that blends contemporary Western production (pop, rock, dance, and electronic) with rhythms, instruments, scales, and vocal styles drawn from diverse musical traditions around the world. It typically features layered percussion, polyrhythms, call-and-response vocals, and multilingual or code-switching lyrics, while maintaining accessible song forms and hook-driven choruses. Arrangements often juxtapose drum kits, bass guitar, and synths with instruments such as kora, mbira, oud, sitar, djembe, balafon, or charango. As a retail and radio category in the 1980s–1990s, worldbeat served both as a creative space for cross-cultural collaboration and a marketing umbrella, attracting praise for bridge-building and criticism for occasional exoticism or unequal credit-sharing.

Afrikaner Folk Music

Afrikaner folk music is the traditional music of South Africa’s Afrikaner (Dutch-descended) community, rooted in the dance repertoire and domestic song culture that developed from the 18th and 19th centuries onward. At its core are lively dance tunes (polka, mazurka, schottische, waltz, vastrap, seties) performed on concertina or accordion with fiddle, guitar, and rhythm section, alongside slower strophic “volksliedjies” (folk songs) sung in Afrikaans. Melodies are straightforward and memorable, harmonies are largely diatonic and triadic, and the feel is explicitly social—meant for community dances, weddings, and home entertainment. While primarily European in origin (Dutch, German, French Huguenot, Scottish/Irish), the style reflects South African contexts, absorbing local grooves and repertoire, interacting with Cape and rural traditions, and evolving into the modern Afrikaans singer‑songwriter and folk-rock streams.

Maskandi

Maskandi (also spelled maskanda) is a guitar-driven Zulu folk-pop tradition from South Africa, rooted in the experiences of rural-to-urban migrant workers. It is characterized by fast, intricate fingerpicked guitar lines, rolling bass movement, and a lead vocal that often alternates between melodic singing and spoken or chanted praise-poetry (izibongo). Choruses typically use call-and-response with a small backing group. Classic ensembles add concertina or accordion and violin to acoustic/electric guitar, with later bands employing drum kits and keyboards. Lyrics, usually in isiZulu, reflect social commentary, personal narratives, journeys between countryside and city, and community pride. Rhythmically, maskandi tends toward a lilting shuffle or 12/8 swing feel, with bright tonic–subdominant–dominant harmonies and pentatonic/modal color. Its sound balances rural roots with township modernity, making it both danceable and storytelling-oriented.

Southern African Folk Music

Southern African folk music is an umbrella for indigenous song, dance, and instrumental traditions found across countries such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini, and Namibia. It centers the human voice, community participation, and cyclical rhythms, with performance contexts ranging from daily work and praise poetry to rites of passage and communal celebrations. Common features include call-and-response singing, handclaps and foot-stomps that articulate polyrhythms (often 3:2 and 12/8 feels), and harmonic textures built from parallel thirds, fourths, and rich choral bass lines. Instruments vary by people and locale: mbira/nyunga-nyunga (lamellophones), marimbas, musical bows (uhadi, umakhweyana), rattles (hosho), drums (ngoma), horns, and later pennywhistles and guitars. Lyrics blend storytelling, praise, social commentary, and spirituality, delivered in languages such as isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho, Setswana, Shona, Tsonga, Ndebele, and others. While deeply rooted in precolonial practices, the genre evolved through contact with mission hymnody and urbanization, giving rise to modern offshoots like isicathamiya, mbube, maskanda, mbaqanga, kwela, chimurenga, marrabenta, sungura, and Tsonga-derived dance forms. Its pulse and communal ethos continue to shape Southern Africa’s musical identity.

Challenges

Digger Battle

Let's see who can find the best track in this genre