The Mahotella Queens - Kazet

The Mahotella Queens are South Africa's foremost afro-pop singing group. The Queens -Hilda Tloubatla, Mildred Mangxola, and Nobesuthu Mbadu- first sealed their place in the legend of urban South African music in the early 1960's when, with Simon Nkabindé Mahlathini (the "Lion of Soweto") and the musicians of the Makgona Tsothle Band ("The Band Who Knows Everything"), they invented Mbaquanga. Mbaquanga (the Zulu word for a kind of dumpling, implying the homemade quality of the music's origin) is a strong and explosive potion of various types of traditional music (Zulu, Sotho, Shangaan, Xhosa) mixed with Marabi (South African jazz), American r&b, soul and gospel.

Throughout the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens played beer halls and township dances in South Africa. Their original sound came to be dubbed the "indestructible beat of Soweto", and their solid four-to-the-floor dance rhythm and soaring vocal harmonies came to embody the spirit of the oppressed peoples of the townships. They soon hit the international stage as heroes of the cultural resistance to apartheid and as idols to South Africa's black community during the dark years. They took a break in the mid-'70s to raise families, but reunited in the beginning of the eighties. In 1987, producer West Nkosi - saxophonist, penny-whistle player, and conductor of the Makgona Tsothle Band - took advantage of a stay in Paris to cut the record "Paris -Soweto" for the French label Celluloid, resulting in the Mahlathini & the Mahotella Queens' international hit "Kazet".

The album "Kazet" is a compilation of recordings that had recently been recorded in South Africa and in Paris, and included the South African national anthem "Nkosi Sikelel' i Afrika" in addition to new compositions such as "Amazemula" ("Monster"), "Nomshloshazana" (A woman's name) and "Ubusuku Nemini" and classics like "Kazet".

The Mahotella Queens - Kazet (192 kbps)