Ladysmith Black Mambazo - Raise Your Spirit Higher (2004) [SACD]

“World music” is, of course, a ridiculous name for a genre, and will continue to be, even after we start listening to music made by residents of other planets and galaxies (we’ll still have to specify which world). But, for now, the term captures that moment in the mid-’80s when the speed of cultural exchange finally caught up with the bountiful music being produced across the globe. Few benefited more from that public awakening than South Africa’s Ladysmith Black Mambazo, whose rich baritone harmonies created a warm bed for Paul Simon’s Graceland. The group was hardly new then — coming together in the early 1960s — and it’s hardly old now. The music has a timeless quality to it, and this is in part because of its delivery in the Zulu tongue.
The term “world music” doesn’t so much describe a specific style, but a way of listening to music. There is a forced disconnect between English-speaking listeners and the Zulu-singing musicians. This creates a certain kind of listening experience. It is one that can be taken many ways, from the superficial (appreciating the exotica of a foreign language) to the pure (appreciating the music purely for how it sounds, as opposed to what it says). For most, Ladysmith Black Mambazo probably falls between these two poles. One doesn’t understand them completely, and uses the liner notes as a guide to their fusion of Christian gospel and Zulu tradition. The listening experience, then, is the process of projecting a sense of meaning on the band’s tranquil a capella vocal arrangements.
Raise Your Spirit Higher, released on the 10th anniversary of the end of South African apartheid, is another notch on the band’s belt. There is nothing particularly new or innovative about it, though the music is quite often transcendently gorgeous, such as the gentle chorus of tongue clicks that pulses behind “Uqinisil’ Ubada (Lord Is The Light And Truth).” Even without the English subtitles and the liner notes, it is not difficult to discern spirituality in the band’s music, something that occurs when human voices blend in this particular way. Unfortunately, the disc’s end is marred slightly by the inclusion of several English-only songs, including the unfortunate “Fak’ Ibhande (Don’t Drink And Drive),” which effectively break the mood. The lyrics on these tracks are poorly written, and the sharp rhythms of the English language not quite as suited to the band’s vocal arrangements as Zulu.
Perhaps it is a culturally brutish complaint coming from an English-speaking listener, but, for its first three-quarters, the disc sustains a sublime atmosphere, remaining deep in the realm of abstraction, so much so that the music becomes interchangeable with the way it feels (as opposed to what it’s saying). Of course, the problem with world music is that one can project so much of himself onto it that he forgets it’s actually made by humans — and humans who have a knack for making creative choices, at that. This realization — which comes inevitably when one reads totally earnest liner notes like “this forms part of a road safety campaign to encourage people to use their safety belts” (and remembers that Ladysmith Black Mambazo once sold a million copies of a record in Britain because of their advertisements for Heinz Baked Beans) — is an important and necessary one. Being from this world, the ten men of Ladysmith Black Mambazo are only human. That’s enough to raise most of Raise Your Spirit Higher from elegantly mysterious to a true artistic achievement.