Monyaka Oa Pelo is based on a beautiful love poem in rhyming verse by Bennett Makalo Khaketla (1913-2000), the Lesotho writer on whom Moerane drew in several of his compositions....
...dedicated the ballet to his wife, the ballerina Linda Smit, ‘and to our future child’, because she was pregnant at the time with their daughter, whom they would name, Lîla....
...them Moerane’s home language, Sesotho (Ma-Homemakers) and the other in is his wife’s home language, isiXhosa. The song can be seen as a tribute to her, Mrs Beatrice Betty Moerane...
...-‘come in peace’ and ‘go in peace’ – are important in Lesotho’s cultural life, greetings found at the country’s border posts, for example. This song indicates that by 1976 Lesotho...
...an ensemble piece. In the first recording below, for example, Reddy plays don’t give a damn blues as a solo, with the tune only beginning after a five-minute bluesy introduction....
...journal Musiktexte (“Neue Musik aus Afrika” at https://texte.musiktexte.de/mt-173/325/ausgewahlte-scheiben-neuer-musik, accessed 31 May 2022) music critic Max Nyffeler writes: “Tamasuza’s compositions are, to European ears, what might be described with the blanket...
...was Thesele, a name that became synonymous with the country itself, as in this song. In 1947 when it was published, many nations re-examined themselves, questioned where they come from...
...his ‘10 principles of clazz’. When he says in bar 137, then, that ‘this is only an example: improvise chords in this pattern according to 2nd harmonic law as accompaniment...
...pieces Reddy played while studying at the Royal College of Music, London: Variation 2, for example, is indebted to Messiaen, Variation 3 to Shostakovitch, Variation 5 to Schubert. Other composers...
...untold history of 20th-century African choral song. Choose either MP3 (normal quality) or FLAC (studio quality) recordings when you make a purchase, and to download the free Liner notes and...
Joshua Pulumo Mohapeloa Critical Edition in Six Volumes (ISMN 979-0-804003-89-5) was first launched in 2015 and was revised in 2016 as a limited edition CD-Rom for publication in SAMUS: South...
...to Marion in Amsterdam they worked together on a short logo for Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR, a German radio and tv channel). The image is one of Reddy’s computer grafic designs....
...iAfrika, Mannenberg (sometimes spelled ‘Manenberg’), Lakutshon Ilanga, Ntyilo-Ntyilo and Mayibuye, Reddy’s music speaks poignantly to the hopes and fears, the joy and the heartache, the excitement and yearning, of the...
...South Africa (Unisa) in 2001, and its title is inspired by the anti-apartheid rallying cry, ‘mayibuye, iAfrika!’ (come back, Africa). The music draws on the composer’s compositional principles of ‘clazz’,...
...pastoralism. Mohapeloa might have learnt or heard pieces such as Schumann’s ‘Song of the Reaper’, for example, during his piano lessons at the Morija mission when he was an adolescent....
The 2009 sonata ‘f-a-i-r-p-l-a-y’ (II extended) is, as the subtitle by Reddy suggests, a longer version of his sonata ‘f-a-i-r-p-l-a-y’ [I] (2007). Reddy partly uses the new piece to change...
...Tsa Afrika II are ‘Ha Eso’ and ‘Jim, Motsoalle oa ka’; in Meloli I, ‘Methaka, Emang’ and ‘Palesa ea Bocha’. The migrant worker, far away from Lesotho on the mines...
...its “tempting pap” (African porridge made from cornmeal), until eventually they return home and are “re-united – duly chastened – with their parents, who had given them up for lost”....
...word ‘brakes’ in the wonderfully understated colloquialism ‘amahyy brakes!’ (‘apply brakes!’) is an excellent example of cultural borrowing – borrowing from the landlord’s culture (because Basutoland was still a British...
...a fine example of Reddy’s mature ‘clazz’ style. Among the many quotations heard along the way are the ‘Hornpipe’ from Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs (a standard number...
...says, a song ‘sung when the skin is scraped to make a karos [blanket]’, and he creates this antiphony by dividing the choir into two groups of Soprano-Tenor-Bass as can...
...being hushed: ‘There, there, little boy / Hush, please, don’t cry’. But quickly he is scorned. ‘Cry baby, you cry too much. / You are even sobbing’. This scorning continues,...
The sonata ‘f-a-i-r-p-l-a-y’ for violin and piano was composed in 2007 as a 50th birthday present for Reddy’s great friend, violinist Michael Wiener. The piece is long and virtuoso, and...
...it is still in Reddy’s ‘clazz’ style. It comprises a repeated arpeggiated figure over which Reddy improvises. The image is a photo of Reddy taken in his home in Konstanz....