Kwanongoma College is a subsidiary of the Rhodesian Academy of Music, devoted to African music and musicians. A lunch-hour concert by pupils yesterday at the Bulawayo City Hall was an exhilarating affair.
Instruments used included marimbas of varied pitch, ordinary Western flute, piano and guitar.
The Kwanongoma pupil is expected to be equally at home on most of these instruments and to sing as well.
Most of the African tunes used a multiplicity of rhythms simultaneously engaged. Hypnotic in effect, these are extraordinarily difficult for Westerners to imitate. The African performers seemed to find them easy.
Melody seems subservient to all this, and is repetitive. The tradition is strong.
One pupil, who performed a Rubinstein piece on the piano, played the melody not as expressive in its own right, but just something to bind together the interesting rhythmic activity in the bass!
The College is doing valuable work in collating and notating traditional music. It is also giving a lot of pleasure.