Vin Crosbie's Personal Blog

For his business blog, visit http://www.digitaldeliverance.com

South Africa

The Beauty of Click Singing in Xhosa

Vin

Yesterday, I posted the Ndlovu Youth Choir of the Republic of South Africa singing Queen‘s Bohemian Rhapsody in the Isizulu language, and I noted that language’s click consonants which are common to Bantu languages but virtually unknown in Indo-European or East Asia languages. Enjoy this six-minute video of South African singer Siki Jo-Ann singing in Xhosa language of South Africa, the second most popular native language in that nation, a wonderful language in which clicking is most prominent. It starts with a two-minute humorous skit between a white South African and a black South African joking about those clicks. Siki Jo-Ann enters at the two and one-half minute mark, singing the clicks of Xhosa.

Zulu Queen

Vin

And why not Queen‘s Bohemian Rhapsody sung in Isizulu by the Ndlovu Youth Choir of the Republic of South Africa? isiZulu (note the lower-case initial i) is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in, and indigenous to, Southern Africa. It’s one of the Republic of South Africa’s official language, spoken by a quarter of that nation’s population, and was the native language of Nelson Mandela. I first heard it during 2009 while working at Rhodes University in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. You’ll hear in it some of the click consonants common to Bantu languages, a common sound unheard of in Indo-European or the languages of East Asia. (Tomorrow, I think that I’ll post a video clip of Siki Jo-Ann who sings in the Xhosa language of South Africa, the second most popular native language in the nation, a wonderful language in which clicking is most prominent.)