Umlazi Dance band – Moonlight Waltz

Umlazi Dance band – Moonlight Waltz

From the late 1920’s, dance bands modeled on whatever glimpses black South Africans could catch of American, preferably African-American performers, had been emerging in South Africa. American influence was also possible with thousands visitors attending bioscope evenings in 1938. Cultural politics was not the only reason why urban Africans performed American music and dance. Jazz may also have become part of South Africa’s urban black music because it reproduces many performance principles of African traditional music. Copyright Haille Stone