Isicathamiya

Isicathamiya is an unaccompanied Zulu male choral style built on tightly voiced four- to ten-part harmony. Basses anchor the texture in deep, sustained chords while the lead tenor floats melody above; the singing is gentle rather than declamatory, paired with a tip-toed dance that gives the music its name (the verb cathama means to stalk or tread softly). A single song moves from spoken introductions to homophonic verses and antiphonal call-and-response between leader and chorus. Subject matter ranges from Christian hymnody and Zulu praise idioms to laments about labor migration and home.

The style took shape from the 1920s onward in the male-only hostels of the South African mining and industrial economy, where Zulu workers far from home held all-night Saturday singing competitions modeled in part on Christian mission-school choirs and on Solomon Linda's older mbube. Linda's 1939 recording 'Mbube' became the source for the global hit known as 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' after Pete Seeger and later songwriters reworked it. Ladysmith Black Mambazo, founded by Joseph Shabalala in the 1960s and brought to a Western pop audience by Paul Simon's 1986 album 'Graceland', is the genre's best-known group and has won five Grammy Awards.

Notice how the bass voices sustain a low, vowel-rich pedal while the upper parts answer in clipped, percussive entries. Dynamics are extraordinarily restrained — there is almost no full-voiced shout — so emotional weight is carried by harmonic motion and by the leader's small ornamental swoops at the ends of phrases. In live competition the dance steps are audible and integral; the soft footfall is part of the rhythm.

Start with 'Homeless' from Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Paul Simon's 'Graceland' (1986), then move to Solomon Linda's original 'Mbube' (1939) to hear the older mbube style from which isicathamiya softened. Mambazo's 'Shaka Zulu' (1987) won the group's first Grammy and is a good full-album entry point.

The legal saga around 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' became a famous case in music-rights history: Solomon Linda died in poverty in 1962, and his heirs only secured back royalties in 2006 after a Rolling Stone exposé and a South African lawsuit against Disney and the song's publishers.