Marabi

Marabi
Stylistic origins	Traditional South African folk Jazz Ragtime Blues
Cultural origins	Early 20th Century: 1920's & 30's

Marabi is a style of township music that evolved in South Africa over the last century.

The early part of the 20th century saw the increasing urbanisation of black South Africans in mining centres such as the gold mining area around Johannesburg - the Witwatersrand. This led to the development of township slums or ghettos, and out of this hardship came forth new forms of music, marabi and kwela amongst others.

Marabi was the name given to a keyboard style (often using cheap pedal organs) that had a musical link to American jazz, ragtime and blues, with roots deep in the African tradition. Early marabi musicians were part of an underground musical culture and were typically not recorded. Indeed, as with early jazz in the USA, the music incurred the displeasure of the establishment. Nonetheless, as with early jazz, the lilting melodies and catchy rhythms of marabi found their way into the sounds of popular dance bands with a distinctively South African style.

The sound of marabi was intended to draw people into local bars or "shebeens" (where illicit drinks like skokiaan were sold), and to get them dancing. "Shebeens" resemble the American speakeasies of the prohibition era where American Jazz was very popular.

Marabi is characterised by a few simple chords repeated in varying vamping patterns that could go on for a long time; repetitive harmonic patterns being typical of traditional African musics. This was the case so people could dance for extended periods of time without having to know the songs well. People were able to pick up the feel and rhythm of the song after a few times through the progression.

The most famous of marabi's venues were the shebeens, and the weekend-long slumyard parties. For almost everyone outside ghetto life, however, marabi and its subculture were shunned. Associated with illegality, police raids, sex and a desperately impoverished working class, marabi was thought of as a corrupting menace and for this reason, it is no surprise that no early marabi musicians were recorded.

A reflection of this music can be heard in the music of such Cape Jazz performers as Basil Coetzee or Abdullah Ibrahim. The beginnings of broadcast radio intended for black listeners and the growth of an indigenous recording industry helped propel such sounds to immense popularity from the 1930s onward.

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Wikipedia