‘Khwela!’ or ‘climb up!’ (Zulu) was often barked at pennywhistlers being ordered into police vans, inspiring the subsequent namesake for the genre ¹.

Other names: Pennywhistle Jive, Tin whistle Jive.

Initially: Scottish pennywhistle (six-hole ‘German metal flageolet’),

Later on: guitar, string bass, banjo.

Originally: marabi, tsaba-tsaba, American swing reed players

Later on: American blues, American jazz, American rock-n roll (though mostly by way of the shared blues influenced between kwela and rock ‘n’ roll).    

Vastrap kwela; Jazz kwela; Blues kwela; Rock ‘n’ roll kwela

While the musical genre known as pennywhistle ‘kwela’ certainly proliferated in the shebeens and stokvels, the use of the pennywhistle as a musical instrument and therefore the true roots of kwela originated long before that in the streets of Johannesburg  ⁵. Credited with being the first type of South African music to truly cross the race barrier and cultivate a white audience, kwela was also the first type of township music to receive international recognition ^1,6 . Though white South Africans played some role in popularizing the genre, it was really the black working class that pushed this genre to such great regional popularity that it ultimately spread beyond South Africa. Kwela has even been described as ‘South African rock ‘n roll’ due to its stylistic similarities, use as dance music, and counter-culture favoritism among white youth ⁷.

 

THE PENNYWHISTLE

Like most any other innovatory, stereotype-defying music genre you might encounter anywhere else in the world and throughout history, kwela has its roots in the repurposing of a new type of ‘music technology’ – a relatively inexpensive, commonplace instrument, whose prevalence and low price tag made it a target for creative expression among Johannesburg’s urban black youth. Regardless of social status or educational background, pretty much anyone could pick up a pennywhistle from a local convenience stores or even bicycle repair and learn how to play it – and perhaps even go on to make some side money playing the shebeen and backyard party circuit. Many professional pennywhistlers who originally had formal music education went on to become successful jazz and mbaqanga musicians playing other instruments, for example Sammy Maritz, who went on to become a renowned Cape Town bassist; Barney Rachabane, and Peter Mokonotela ⁸. Furthermore, the penny whistle helped to change African music significantly by popularizing the use of a seven tone scale over the five tone scales of indigenous pre-colonial music ⁹.  

The pennywhistle, or six-hole German flageolet, was mostly likely first introduced in the late 1800s by British troops in the first Boer War. Following that, in the early 1900s, Scottish immigrants would rehearse their fife and drum band routines in public places where township youth often gathered to watch and eventually emulate these sounds on their own penny whistles  ¹. However, long before that, young herdboys living in rural areas outside of Johannesburg had been using the traditional Zulu umtshingo as a signaling device and musical instrument, such that the pennywhistle’s similarity to the umtshingo likely explains the ease with which the instrument was assimilated into black township youth culture  ¹. This is particularly true for famous kwela musicians like Reggie Msomi, Allen Kwela and Ben Nkosi, who grew up in rural areas where they learned how to make their own umtshingo ¹.

Early pennywhistles were made of brass, but they also could be made from other plated metals, plastic, or even from bicycle parts   ¹⁰. An unmodified pennywhistle produces a rather dull and uninspired sound, so the first thing a musician would do after purchasing their pennywhistle is use a pocket knife to gouge out a wider, v-shaped air hole in the mouth piece. When the instrument was then held in the mouth at a 45 degree angle with the air hole partially covered, this allowed the player to produce a louder, richer and ‘buzzier’ sound ⁵. Some players, like Ben Nkosi – one of the more creative pennywhistle players of the kwela boom years – would take this technique a step further by using a throat-growing technique to create a vibrato effect   ⁵.

Pennywhistle players were invariably male and rarely older than 30 years of age – for example, Jack Lerole was only 16 when he recorded his first song in 1952 –  both because many musicians moved on from the pennywhistle to play other instruments, and because kwela didn’t persevere as a popular genre long enough for its most famous players to surpass young adulthood   ⁵. As such, one of the social phenomenons of pennywhistle jive is its historical association with the the Amalaita gang, which is considered to be Johannesburg’s “first organized group of juvenile delinquents”  ¹¹. These boys, who were mostly of Pedi descent and born into Christian families, initially banded together in resistance efforts against apartheid pass laws – efforts which often included engaging in criminal activity, ranging from acts of petty theft to more serious instances of violence  ¹¹. However, when they weren’t involved in criminal acts, Amalaita members imitated the Scottish bands’ marching band practices, going as far as to dress up in Scottish attire and play covers of popular American jazz tunes on pennywhistle and home-made drums in the streets of Johannesburg throughout the 1930s and 1940s ¹. These bands likely provided a distractive outlet for young people who might have otherwise found social gratification in violent gang activities. Amalaita members quickly developed a reputation for being “muggers at night (that) sat around during the day playing pennywhistles and looking innocent” (Ntemi Piliso)  ¹.    

Unfortunately, the same factors that made the pennywhistle accessible to a socioeconomically diverse audience ironically also meant that the pennywhistle carried a lower-class connotation that made it difficult for even the most talented players to gain formal musical recognition  ¹. Jazzmen of the previous generation saw the pennywhistle players as illegitimate ‘country boys’ playing toy instruments that carried neither the traditional status of indigenous South African instruments, nor the elite status awarded to Western instruments like the guitar or concertina. Considering that pennywhistle jive had been around as a form of street music since at least the 1920s, and that kwela didn’t take off in the commercial music industry until the 1950s, it took quite some time for the instrument and its associated musical stylings to be accepted by elite and ultimately mainstream social circles  ¹.

 

ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION

Though kwela really evolved from the pennywhistle jive music performed by young township-dwelling South Africans busking in the streets of Johannesburg, shebeen and stokvel parties played an important role in expanding and molding the genre into the style that would eventually achieve local and international notoriety  ^1,5. Shebeens and stokvel parties functioned as melting pots for pennywhistle players to combine their music with other styles, or opportune habits in which players “could both present their music to the community and incorporate the community’s spirit and songs back into their music” ⁵. Young pennywhistlers like the Lerole brothers, influenced by the marabi and tsaba-tsaba tunes they heard growing up as well as influential local (Zacks Nkosi) and American jazz (Benny Goodman) reed players, learned to incorporate popular African and western melodies into their repertoire when they were hired to play in shebeens and stokvels beginning in the 1940s  ⁵. This is also where they developed techniques to create glides and blues notes, as well as a highly vocal-emulating style used to reproduce American jazz, marabi, tsaba tsaba and other popular South African folk and jazz melodies as kwela tunes  ¹. At some point in the early 1950s – around when the genre started drawing commercial interest – pennywhistle jive developed from a form of improvised street music into the instrument-backed form of ‘kwela’ that also utilized guitars, string bass (sometimes even a tea-box bass), and eventually the banjo  ¹.  

 

MUSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Kwela, unlike some of the other genres amorphously grouped together as South African ‘jazz styles,’ stands out clearly as a genre on the basis of the pennywhistle’s leading musical role. Aside from that, kwela or ‘pennywhistle jive’ also tends to follow some kwela-specific structural rules. Since pennywhistles either take the form of B flat or G instruments, kwela is usually in one of these two keys  ¹⁰. Rhythmically, kwela is played with a swung rhythm, as opposed to a ‘straight’ rhythm like in marabi and mbaqanga; some kwela furthermore features a vastrap-emulating banjo part as well as some melodic and rhythmic similarities to boeremusick and Cape-originating ghommamaliedjies ^10,12.  

Like other South African jazz-like styles and most African music in general, kwela is characterized by a call and response format and cyclical harmonic patterning. The call and response aspect of kwela is not only a common feature to many South African and pan-African music styles, but also to most African-American-originated music styles such as the blues and jazz  ⁶. However, If you listen to kwela alongside other South African ‘jazz styles’ like marabi, mbaqanga, and other township jazz variants, it quickly becomes apparent that harmonic cyclicity is what chiefly distinguishes South African jazz music of the early to mid-1900s from Westernized jazz of the same era, which is founded on functional harmony  ⁶. Though kwela’s cyclical and repetitive nature was often criticized by ‘musical elites’ in the international community, this element is originally what made it so popular amongst the South African working class ⁷. In kwela, the cyclicity can be heard in a vamped chord sequence, usually taking the form of C-F-C-G7, and typically presented in one of two ways – either in the pennywhistle part itself (as a series of motifs repeated cyclically and occasionally broken up by improvised passages), or as a  backing riff played by accompanying instruments behind the lead pennywhistle part  ^1,6. Moreover, kwela (and many other South African jazz styles) traditionally used only primary triads, while seventh and substitution chords appear only in more Western-jazz-influenced kwela tunes  ⁶.

The pennywhistle’s inherent limitations as an instrument meant that South African players, many of whom took up pennywhistle when jazz was at its peak popularity and who often sought to emulate the styles of great jazz reed-players, were known for innovating creative ways to command a richer and more tonally complex sound from the instrument. Firstly, as mentioned before, players would physically modify the pennywhistle mouthpiece and hold the instrument in such a way that it produced a more harmonically-rich sound than would be possible otherwise. On top of that, a second octave could be added to the instrument’s default single-octave range by way of overblowing, and notes outside of the major scale (which was B flat or G major, depending on the model) could be achieved either by cross-fingering or by strategically covering parts of the tone holes ¹⁰.   

While some derivative styles (for example, sax jive) have attempted to stylistically emulate or recreate some elements of kwela, a tune cannot truly be considered ‘kwela’ without the lead pennywhistle part  ¹⁰. Pennywhistle aside, the backing instrumentation of kwela has changed and expanded significantly as the genre evolved from a style of street jive music to a staple of the commercial music industry. In its most basic and earliest form, kwela utilized just a solo pennywhistle part and a backing guitar, which played the shuffled rhythm part (and as a result, the guitar, rather than the drumset, was responsible for grounding the rhythm later on). Following that, a string bass (sometimes a teabox bass) and drums were added to the guitar to make a rhythm section. In its most typical and popular form, kwela featured a solo pennywhistle, a pennywhistle chorus playing a backing part, and a simple rhythm section.

Moving forward into the 1950s, kwela naturally morphed into several variations and derivative forms – banjos were sometimes used to fill out the rhythm section, leading to a ‘vastrap-kwela’ offshoot style  ³, while professional jazz musicians’ interest in kwela (as the genre took on more commercial and widespread appeal) would lead to a more Western-jazz-influenced style of kwela  ⁹. By the late 1950s, kwela’s pennywhistle would be replaced with the saxophone and its acoustic instruments with electric ones as the genre segwayed into sax jive, which subsequently took over as black urban South Africa’s most popular musical style ¹³.  

 

INFLUENCE, SPREAD AND LEGACY

Though township youngsters had been performing pennywhistle music in the streets of Johannesburg for decades, ‘pennywhistle jive’ wouldn’t take off as a popular genre until the early 1950s, and wouldn’t adopt the name ‘kwela’ until 1958. Though pennywhistle players like Willard Cele had been recording and releasing music since his feature in the Donald Swanson’s classic 1951 film “The Magic Garden,” it wouldn’t be until Spokes Mashiyane entered the popular music scene that the genre known as ‘kwela’ would really take off. Mashiyane may have helped develop the genre by taking tunes popular in the stokvels, shebeens and repurposing them into kwela songs for commercial release  ⁶. By the 1950s, kwela had evolved into a genre that was considered urbanized, black and South African, in comparison to marabi, tsaba tsaba and other predecessor genres which were (with debatable validity) sometimes dismissed for being too ‘rural’ or ‘tribal’ in nature ¹. Like many other South African dance music genres, kwela had its own associated dance style, called ‘patha patha’ (later made famous by the Miriam Makeba song) that was popularized amongst urban African youth at informal social gatherings ¹.

Kwela was (perhaps somewhat controversially) the first homegrown South African black music genre to achieve a dedicated following amongst white and black South Africans, as well as overseas, for a few specific reasons  ¹². First of all, from its inception, kwela was significantly credited with being not only a genuinely and independently South African ‘brand’ of music, but also uniquely emblematic of Johannesburg street culture. This was likely due to pennywhistle jive’s roots in black urban street culture, which helped create an image of pennywhistle music for white Johannesburg residents “as a manifestation of their own cultural identity” simply for being inherent to Johannesburg’s sonic landscape  ¹³. Secondly, kwela’s popularity amongst Johannesburg’s white youth took on somewhat of a parallel trajectory to American rock-n-roll due to an odd and unexpected combination of incidental and political factors that made kwela suitable as a functional ‘rock rebellion’ token for South Africa’s white youth  ¹².   

From a practical standpoint, kwela shared enough structural similarities with rock-n-roll to make it a proxy for dancing the Jitterbug and Lindy Hop, which were both popular among South Africa’s urban youth (regardless of race) due to their association with ‘progressive’ American culture  ⁴. Politically, the choice for some white South Africans to advocate for kwela culture tended to follow one of two seemingly contradicting agendas, which Lara Allen (arguably one of the better resources for a historical perspective on kwela) has described as the “politics of identity” versus “politics of pleasure”  ¹³.

On one hand, some white Africans actively supported kwela culture (for example, by attending and promoting performances, or by hiring kwela musicians to perform at principally white-attended events) as a direct choice to align themselves with the apartheid resistance movement. These types of socially-proactive behaviors might be considered political in the sense of promoting an identity, specifically one that openly advocates for and celebrates black culture. On the other hand, kwela also accrued popularity among youth Africans merely for representing an oppositional stance to the party in power and therefore the status quo, as well as being similar enough to rock-n-roll to make it to make it interchangeable for dancing purposes. In this “politics of pleasure” view, the choice to attend kwela parties perhaps granted white South Africans a feeling of (albeit superficial in nature) national pride and active opposition to authority  ¹³. The ‘counter-culture’ or ‘forbidden-fruit’ stigma assigned to kwela was aggravated further when South African apartheid officials began actively and publicly criticizing the genre as a direct violation of the Immorality Act due to the implications of white youth dancing ‘provocatively’ to music performed by black Africans  ¹⁴. Regardless of political affiliation, however, kwela ultimately in some respects became the subject of co-opting by both liberal and conservative parties, who both strategically utilized kwela’s seemingly happy-go-lucky musical aesthetic to knowingly and unknowingly minimize the plight of black people in the kwela boom years. Conservatives essentially used kwela to illustrate the argument that blacks in South Africa were somehow better off under apartheid policies, as illustrated anecdotally in the 1958 South African Information Service-produced film The Condemned are Happy, which predominantly used kwela to accompany township scenes depicting black people ostensibly living happily under the apartheid regime  ⁴.

By the late 1950’s, kwela had even reached the international market when the song “Tom Hark” by developed a fan base in Britain, making kwela the first South African music style to achieve commercial success in another country  ^1,7. “Tom Hark,” released in 1956 by Elias Lerole and his Zig-Zag flutes (featuring Jack Lerole playing pennywhistle), was also credited with introducing the term ‘kwela’ as a label for the genre, by way of an intro skit portraying a scene of black street gamblers yelling out ‘daar kom die kwela-kwela!’ as a police van approaches. In this context, ‘kwela’ is intended to produce a doubly significant interpretation – in one sense, as the literal translation from the iZulu word for “climb on” or  “get up,” often shouted to warn of approaching police vans; and secondly, as a positive though less literal message meaning “get up, Africa”  ^1,8. Two years after its initial release, “Tom Hark” reached the “top of the British hit parade” and was implemented as the theme for a British TV series (The Killing Stones), as well as covered by famous jazz players like Ted Heath and even ska bands including The Piranhas  ⁷.

Kwela’s success in the international market oddly synchronized with its demise in its South African homebase, as sax jive began to displace the genre in popularity and the full crystallization of the apartheid regime created logistical and legal obstacles toward black street performance culture and any form of social mixing of the races  ¹². Other assaults on black culture and society, like the destruction of Sophiatown and subsequent removals to Soweto, were also responsible for suppressing kwela’s large-scale popularity and potential for enjoyment as a musical genre  ¹².   

Jack Lerole – “Lion Kiler” (1958):

Elias and his Zig-Zag Jive Flutes – “Tom Hark” (1956) – One of the first kwela songs to become popular in Britain and internationally², which was later covered by a British ska band i.e. The Piranhas – “Tom Hark” (1980):

Ben Nkosi – “Kalla’s Special” (date unknown, available here) – example of “throat-growling” vibrato effect:

Zacks Nkosi – “Swazi Stomp” (1952) (available here) – South African jazz clarinet player responsible for influencing pennywhistle musicians’ playing style:

Spokes Mashiyane – “Phesheya” (1965) (available here) – example of “Vastrap-kwela” offshoot style featuring a banjo part ³:

Willard Cele’s “Pennywhistle Blues” and “Pennywhistle Boogie”
(both 1951) (available here and here) were both written in the 12-bar blues form with a shuffle beat, and rock n roll was heavily influenced by the blues ⁴:

Spokes Mashiyane – “Phenduka Twist” (date unknown, available here) – example of a rock n roll influenced kwela tune ⁴:

Allen, Lara. 1993. “Pennywhistle Kwela : A Musical, Historical and Sociopolitical analysis.” University of Natal, Durban: Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. ⁵

Allen, Lara. 1996 “Drumbeats, Pennywhistles and All That Jazz: The Relationship between Urban South African Musical Styles and Musical Meaning.” African Music 7.3: 52-29. Print. ⁷

Allen, Lara. “Vocal Jive and Political Identity in the 1950’s.” In Cristine Lucia (Ed.), The World of South African Music. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005. Print. p.267 ⁶, 270 ¹⁰,

Coplan, David. In Township Tonight! South Africa’s Black City Music and Theatre, 2nd Edition. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008. Print. p.80 ¹¹, 192 ¹, 194 ¹², 196 ⁹

Martin, Denis-Constant. Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa. Cape Town: African Minds, 2013. Print. p.139 ⁸

Olwage, Grant. Composing Apartheid: Music For and Against Apartheid. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2008. Print. p.79 ¹³, 83 ⁴, 87 ¹⁴, 91 ³