Billy Monama is an educator, author and highly astute guitarist who has devoted his life and craft to immortalizing the sounds of the past and retracing our heritage through harmonics.
His first overt attempt to do this emerged last year in the form of his book, Introduction to South African Guitar Styles Volume one.
“The book is getting somewhere, it’s still newly published last year around May. It is in schools and in universities and in the U.S at the University of Southern California. It is being used as learning support material helping scholars to continue with their studies and research.
"We are working in the second volume now. It isn’t easy to publish a book, but I have started doing the research and I have interview so many musicians. It took me 15 years to publish the first volume and I would like the second one out in five years. This one will cover the years from 1980 to 2000. The first one covered from 1930 to 1980."
The second volume will examine the migration of the guitar and how artists from other regions in Southern African helped shape our soundscape.
“The guys who came from Mozambique like Jimmy Dludlu for instance. All these musicians who came from different parts of SADAC contributed to our sounds so the emergence of blues, mbaqanga and jazz. Research takes time but we will see how we do this time around. At least this time the musicians are mostly still alive as I struggled with the first one as they weren’t and didn’t have pictures so it should be really good this time.”
Mayibuye iAfrika
His latest project will take place at the Market Theatre on 9 September.
This concert will trace the sounds of the struggle and pay homage to the fearless composers who weaponized the sonics and aimed these straight at the old regime.
What inspired Billy to do this concert, “was a lack of consciousness amongst us as the people of Azania. There are so many things that are happening, social ills, socialism. If you read every day and watch the news, there is so much killing. What we thought would be over is not as we still see racism every day," the native of Mahwelereng in Limpopo explains.
“Men are raping kids and murdering women and that is because of a lack of consciousness. The primary objective of this project is to revive the consciousness of in the African society. Respect, humility and generosity have always been the crucial cornerstones of social life in Africa and so we just need to reset and go back and find ourselves and love ourselves as black people.”
The story behind the production is solely about reviving African consciousness through music. In 1964 on November 6th, there were composers killed by the government of Verwoerd. Today there are so many freedom songs that are sung but we don’t know who the composers were. This production will pay homage to the first generation of the exiles who were born in the 1920’s.
“They were killed by the apartheid government after a treason trial they went to, and they were prosecuted. We also celebrate the second generation of exiles who left after Sharpeville like Miriam Makeba, Caiphus Semenya. Music was an instrument to fight and emancipate this country.”
Billy says audience goers should expect a great repertoire presented by their favourites. Billy has included the always masterful Sipho Hotstix Mabuse, who was part of this generation of artists who helped in emancipating this country.
“We also have Judith Sephuma who will be doing the songs of Letta Mbuli. For the first time you will hear her singing covers or rather existing material. Titi Luzipo will be doing Miriam Makeba, so it is going to be a variety.”
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The first segment of the show will be acapella arrangement, and the production will pay tribute to the first generation. The second segment will comprise of material from the second generation of exiles like Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa.
Restoring consciousness
Billy thinks that music was never about entertainment. For him musicians are messengers and are here to tell stories of our people and preserve heritage through music. It was about making the nation.
“The preparations had to start with the research. I had to find out about these south African freedom songs, who were the composers. We had to then present this to the sponsors and then they came on board. Then it was a question of the musicians would be to play these songs. The preparations were massive but the sponsors came through as did the Market Theater and so I am glad about that.”
Dealing in theatre these days is always a risk as this avenue of the arts is not as adored as it once was and then there is the at times insurmountable obstacle of funding.
“The challenge was getting the material available. I have done some consultations with various institutions who availed me with music I could reference from. The second challenge was financial support. When you do this kind of project, not every institution will be aligned with the nature of this. It was challenging to meet the timelines because of the financial support but I think as South Africans we have great ideas but to implement them becomes difficult because of backing.”
Billy’s favourite part of this production is that he gets to work with a stellar team of creatives.
“I have great musicians on the band stand and the liberty to explore with those freedom songs. I had the privilege of paying tribute to these exiles and I know I am keeping their legacy alive. This one will be double the expectancy of other tributes I have done. We really mean it this time as we want to reinstall the consciousness."
He also lauds his technical team who played a pivotal part in ensuring this production differs to the other ones Billy has done.
"This production is different because I have a grass roots orchestra. About 15 musicians on stage, strings, the band and the vocal harmonies as well as the guest artists. You hardly see that, and we have the audio-visual feature that will be designed from scratch to help tell the story. We have a repertoire of music a lot of people have never heard before. This tribute stems from choral music all the way to instrumental works. We touch Maskanda and even pay tribute to Busi Mhlongo who was in exile in 1971."
The message he would like to convey with Mayibuye iAfrika, is in the title itself. The message of Ubuntu and the thoughts of Steve Biko’s black consciousness will be conveyed creatively.
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“The impact of this project will be to restore African heritage. As Hugh Masekela would say, we need an African restoration. After 1994 we lost it. Before then people were galvanized and now, they aren’t which is why you hear about people going on killing sprees. If I could touch 450 people, I would have done well. We want to mobilize people by putting them together in concert so we can discuss these issues.”
Ours is a country that loves music, but some have veered far away from music with necessary messages.
“The young people need to know their purpose, why they are doing music and why they want to become performers. We are not saying we are an example of good music, but young people need to consider that they are not just music. They need to write music that will conscientize people and speak about the social ills in society. They need to go to school as talent is not enough. A balance of street smarts and book smarts is important.”
