Music of Mzilikazi Khumalo

Mzilikazi Khumalo (1932-2021), an iconic figure in choral music in South Africa, rose to prominence as one of Africa’s leading composers of art music. This is a work of music history.

Biographical essays on Khumalo’s major works, including those for choir, orchestra, and opera are complemented by contextual studies of his compositions and arrangements as well as reflections on his roles as editor, conductor, and music director. Specifically in the context of South Africa's cultural and political transition from Apartheid to democracy, Khumalo's key role in establishing the Nation Building Massed Choir Festival, a multi-racial institution that forged an inclusive space for music, in the 1980s is discussed as evidence of his importance and relevance in South African culture.

Khumalo's major works are studied in relation to contemporary art music, choral composition, and traditional song. These are UShaka KaSenzangakhona (1996), an African epic, and Princess Magogo KaDinuzulu (2002), one of the first indigenous African operas. Khumalo's artistic collaborators provide insight into their experiences working on these major projects, documenting the relationships the composer cultivated with his peers. This volume addresses a lacuna in the literature on South African art music which until recently tended to focus on works in the classical tradition and shows that Khumalo is a composer without peer in his synthesis of classical and choral, traditional and contemporary.

Thomas M. Pooley is Professor of Music and Chair of the Department of Art and Music at the University of South Africa. He has published widely on African art music, and on Zulu music, language and culture. He is the author of The Land is Sung: Zulu Performances and the Politics of Place (2023). Pooley is founding managing editor of the journal Analytical Approaches to African Music.

Naomi André is the David G. Frey Distinguished Professor of Music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA, and Professor Emerita of Afroamerican and African Studies, Women's and Gender Studies, and the Residential College at the University of Michigan, USA. She is the author of Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (2018) and a founding member of the Black Opera Research Network (BORN).

Innocentia Mhlambi is Associate Professor in the Department of African Languages at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She is the author of African-language Literatures: Perspectives on isiZulu Fiction and Popular Television Series, and co-author of Mintiro ya Vulavula: Arts, national identities and democracy in South Africa.

Donato Somma is Senior Lecturer and Head of Music at the Wits School of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Somma has published on African operas and on music in Italian prisoner of war camps in South Africa.