SA composer makes history with writing Xhosa folklore songs for Harvard Glee Club
By Mthuthuzeli Ntseku
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Cape Town - A 47-year-old Khayelitsha-based composer has made history by being the first black South African to be commissioned by Harvard University to write folklore songs in IsiXhosa for its male Glee Club.
Bongani Magatyana from Site C said he was approached by the institution last year after he was introduced to the director of choral activities at the university, Andrew Clark, and later performed his composition Khaya Lami.
Magatyana said he owed his experience to the Siyaya Ensemble at JL Zwane Centre in Gugulethu, where he wrote songs about HIV/Aids in multiple genres in 2006.
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Though WHRB had to initiate its newest members over Zoom, each student picked a traditional five-character radio name.
Tune into WHRB, Harvard’s student-run radio station, just after midnight on a Sunday and you’ll hear the thumping bass of hip-hop, the staccato pulses of rap, and the soulful cadences of R&B. These beats, part of WHRB’s black music department, The Darker Side, comprise just a few hours of the station’s 24/7 lineup, which undergraduate DJs have typically broadcast live from its cozy studio in the basement of Pennypacker Hall.
But since COVID-19 closed campus, those DJs have had to pre-record programs and broadcast them remotely. They had the necessary infrastructure used during winter recess, for example but there was only so much pre-produced content already available, explained program director Katharine A.K. Courtemanche ’21. “So the question was: how are we going to continue to make, produce, and record remotely really high-quality air for such a lon