South Africa was not a slave-raiding area for the New World labor market, and
South African musical traditions therefore did not influence New World music
before mid-twentieth-century contacts and exchanges (e.g., Louis Armstrong's
adaptation of August Musurugwa's "Skoklaan" theme; the recording of "Wi-
moweh" by the Weavers in 1951 [Decca 27928]; the emigration to the United
States of South African singers and instrumentalists such as Miriam Makeba,
Dollar Brand, and others; and the touring of mbaqanga groups since Paul Simon's
Graceland album -- cf. Erlmann 1991). Influence in the other direction, however,
had occurred much earlier. U.S. spiritual and harmony singing became known
in South Africa in the last few years of the nineteenth century through the
activities of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, through touring Ameri-
can minstrel groups ( Coplan 1985: 39), and later the appearance of the Virginia
Jubilee Singers in Cape Town and other places. All this influenced composers
such as Reuben Tholakele Caluza, Alfred Assegal Kumalo, and many others (cf.
Rycroft 1957, 1967, 1977, 1991 for a thorough assessment of the various Isizulu-
language and other vocal styles). To this day, in South Africa and neighboring
territories with a South-Africa-oriented educational system, late nineteenth-cen-
tury Negro spirituals and some of their South African derivatives are standard
teaching repertoire in many schools. Even in relatively remote areas of southern
Africa, as on European-owned farms in Namibia, we recorded as recently as
1991 workers' choirs that had incorporated spirituals in their repertoires. One of
these choirs, operating at the Ibenstein farm and carpet factory southeast of
Windhoek, under the directorship of Frank Gebhardt, called itself The Weav-
ers. Most certainly they had picked their name not only from their occupation

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