"Les Enfants Zulus"

[Rcartes]

Bit of a long shot, but I wondered if anyone here had ever come across an African singing group called Les Enfants Zulus.

It's a long shot because I remember the name from recordings broadcast from a (probably French) radio station in the late 1950s.

Google and other searches draw a blank, and I'm beginning to wonder if I remember the name correctly, so any help is welcomed

[Globaltruth]

Bit of a long shot, but I wondered if anyone here had ever come across an African singing group called Les Enfants Zulus.

It's a long shot because I remember the name from recordings broadcast from a (probably French) radio station in the late 1950s.

Google and other searches draw a blank, and I'm beginning to wonder if I remember the name correctly, so any help is welcomed

Not a name I know Rcartes, sorry. I've also done a quick search using a search engine that searches search engines (too many searches, I know) which also didn't find anything that looked useful.
Similarly on discogs which also drew a blank

Any more clues?

[Rcartes]

Not a name I know Rcartes, sorry. I've also done a quick search using a search engine that searches search engines (too many searches, I know) which also didn't find anything that looked useful.
Similarly on discogs which also drew a blank

Any more clues?

No, sorry: that's the extent of my knowledge. Too long ago, I suppose...

[Globaltruth]

Ah well, have to make do with this amateur video of some slightly older, v smart Zulus instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-n-SrHtKEo

check out those moves!

[Lat-Literal]

Bit of a long shot, but I wondered if anyone here had ever come across an African singing group called Les Enfants Zulus.

It's a long shot because I remember the name from recordings broadcast from a (probably French) radio station in the late 1950s.

Google and other searches draw a blank, and I'm beginning to wonder if I remember the name correctly, so any help is welcomed

No, I don't know.

1. Key work of Belafonte and Makeba - Zulu songs and other songs - mainly emanates from the 1960s. The background to them was no doubt longer.

2. Constance Magogo Sibilile Mantithi Ngangezinye kaDinuzulu was a Zulu Princess born in 1900.....she composed Zulu classical music and was gifted in playing isigubhu and isithontolo and was also a singer. Despite being raised in a culture oppressive to women she continued her music after marriage. This enabled her to contribute in the development of traditional music. Through the training of many young singers she made an unprecedented contribution to the preservation of traditional music......As imbongi she transcended the boundaries of this role, which was traditionally a male preserve, to lament on her marriage and the lives of especially the Zulu people. Her career gained momentum in 1939 with a recording of her by Hugh Tracey.....by the 1950s, her music was widely recorded and played by the South African Broadcasting Corporation, David Rycroft and West German Radio. These recordings afforded Magogo an international audience and recognition. Her work was largely from Zulu songs and folktales, and she extended them into her music.

Hugh Tracey - Zulu songs recorded in 1955 but adults -

http://www.folkways.si.edu/zulu-hymns-and-ceremonial-songs/world/music/album/smithsonian

Here are some later recordings of children from the Rycroft collection:

http://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Rycroft/025M-C0811X0086XX-1300V0

http://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Rycroft/025M-C0811X0081XX-1600V0

3. Also in 1955 -

"Folk Songs of Four Continents" - The Song Swappers and Pete Seeger - http://www.folkways.si.edu/the-song-...um/smithsonian

"Roots of OK Jazz - Zaire Classics 1955-56" - on Cramworld Crammed Discs, 1993

French radio station "Europe 1" started broadcasting from Saarland - its groundbreaking mission - first, news and cultural information with an emphasis on eyewitness accounts rather than an announcer with a script; second, shows aimed at establishing bonds with listeners, including plays, contests, informal talk, popular music, and street-level politics.

4. Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain, the first female Haitian anthropologist, conducted field research in Congo, Togo and Nigeria and worked with renowned anthropologists Herskovits and Metraux who entrusted her and her husband Jean with a mission of the UNESCO in Haiti, leading to numerous distinctions. There is research from her which just might have had a musical component - ’Les jeux des enfants noirs à Léopoldville’, Zaїre 3, 1949 (1949a) and ’Quelques devinettes des enfants noirs de Léopoldville’, Africa 19, 1949 (1949b).

5. Gilbert Rouget, born 1916, is a French ethnomusicologist and was director of the Department of Ethnomusicology of the Museum of Man. He invested in the sound equipment of the Museum of Man where he created in 1947 a sound recording studio. In 1962, he was co-founder of Éditions Classiques Africains. Mainly he conducted scientific missions in Africa with the aim of collecting the traditional musical practices of the populations visited, making sound recordings and photographs or films. The music of initiation ceremonies in Benin was recorded in 1958. That has been considered by Judith Becker in the 1986 academic research paper "Is Western Art Music More Serious?, now published in "Oxford Journals" - and there is also a reference in the relevant part of it to Tran Quang Hai at the Museum of Man - https://translate.google.co.uk/trans...5E1%25BA%25A3i - who is also interesting!!

6. David Attenborough - "Travellers Tales" by the BBC Travel/Exploration Unit - televised in Britain in 1960; included Chop! Music and Zulu Dancing.

7. The James Stuart Archive of "Recorded Oral Evidence Relating to the History of the Zulu and Neighbouring Peoples" wasn't published until 1976.

8. Finally, an outside bet - there could be knowledge in/around Transglobal Underground and Ingrid Webster, daughter of the late Doreen Thobekile who was in Natal in the 1950s.