(Professor Khabi
Mngoma)
Esayidi TVET College proudly honours the cultural legacy of
the late Professor Khabi Mngoma, a legend in South Africa’s grand tradition of choral
singing.
Funded by the National Lotteries Commission, a concert
featuring songs that Professor Mngoma conducted will be performed by a choir of
40 voices made up of unemployed youth from the communities of Port Shepstone
and eMpangeni who have received monthly stipends in preparation for performing
at this significant cultural event which will take place in eMpangeni on November
27.
Prof Khabi Mngoma was born in Troyeville, north east of
Johannesburg on November 18, 1922. He grew up in a musically-fertile
environment and came from musically gifted parents. His mother, Agnes Matutu
Nyembe, was a schoolteacher and his father, David Zwelonke Mngoma, a virtuoso
concertina-playing maskandi musician.
By the time Mngoma attained his last work post as Head of
Music at the University of Zululand, he had worked in the cultural sphere as
artist, teacher, publisher, organizer (of cultural activities), choir conductor
and singing coach, historian, and administrator.
He founded and ran numerous music programmes, through his
teachings and through music performances and concerts; he always strived to
expand his pupils’ vocabulary and the audiences’ experience. He always
incorporated what he believed was an acknowledgement of the dual worlds ... the
African and the West, in which the ‘present-day African’ lived and firmly
believed that the teaching of music needed to reflect this reality for all
students of music.
For him, it was not enough to understand music solely for
academic study. It was his experience that those learners who were high
achievers in the music programme he ran, also excelled in Mathematics and
English, Biology and Geography and other academic school subjects. He also
found that many of these learners developed a keen sense of responsibility and
citizenship, compassion and empathy, respect for self and others, and generally
were an asset to their communities in a myriad ways.
Prof Mngoma, who died in 1999 at the age of 77, founded the
Music Department at the University of Zululand in 1975. He also started the
Ford Choirs in Contest in 1977 which is now known as the Old Mutual National
Choir Festival; established the Ionian Music Society in 1960; the Ionian Youth
Orchestra in 1969; and the Khongisa Youth Centre for the Performing Arts in
1976.
He was a valued member of the Roodepoort Eisteddfod panel,
as well as an active member of the SAMRO Music Committee while having a long
association with the University of South Africa during which he made
considerable contributions to the teaching of music in schools as well as the
training of choral directors. He is also the father of singer Sibongile Khumalo
and musician Lindumuzi Mngoma.
The concert will take place at the Embizweni Hall in
eMpangeni on November 27 at 18h00. Admission is free and all are welcome.
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