The South African composer, arranger and choral director who was born as James Stephen Mzilikazi Khumalo now goes by the name Mzilikazi Khumalo. He is also a Professor Emeritus of African Languages. He was born June 20, 1932 and is profiled at AfriClassical.com:
SAMRO, the Southern African Music Rights Organization,
maintains a comprehensive biography which is the primary source for
this page. It begins with the composer's birth in 1932 on a Salvation
Army farm: “James Stephen Mzilikazi Khumalo was born on 20 June 1932 on
the Salvation Army farm, KwaNgwelu (known as Mountain View in English),
in the Vryheid district of Natal, South Africa, where his parents were
being trained as Salvation Army ministers.”
A detailed interview with Prof. Mzilikazi Khumalo is found at the SAMRO website:
A recent overview of South African opera appeared in Daily Maverick:
Madiba’s Song: Opera and the state in post-Apartheid South Africa
J Brooks Spector26 May 2014 [Excerpt]
Most notably, after its debut in South Africa, Mzilikazi Khumalo’s Princess Magogo
has been performed abroad and – after several rewrites - is probably
South Africa’s best-known locally written opera. Drawn from the true
story of a daughter of a Zulu king who was ordered to compose her music
in order to rally a conquered, shattered society, thereby surrendering
her desires for love and a family, the work made use of more usual
operatic conventions as well as inspiration from Magogo’s actual
compositions.
From
its enthusiastic reception in South Africa as well as a favourable
reception at Chicago’s Ravinia Festival, Khumalo’s opera (orchestrated
by others) seems to have led the way for a rethink for South African
officialdom – and a real volte-face about the uses of opera in the
battle to sculpt a new nation. No longer just for those Eurocentric
wannabes, opera was now a tool to demonstrate that the new South Africa
could play in the cultural big leagues – that this so-called provincial
nation could also do the operatic dance.
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