The two major language groups in South Africa and neighbouring countries are the Nguni and the Sotho, each consisting of several sub-groups. While the Nguni live mostly along the coast, the wide-spread Sotho peoples live on the high internal plateau in South Africa, Botswana and Zambia. The two...
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The two major language groups in South Africa and neighbouring countries are the Nguni and the Sotho, each consisting of several sub-groups. While the Nguni live mostly along the coast, the wide-spread Sotho peoples live on the high internal plateau in South Africa, Botswana and Zambia. The two sub-groups whose music is featured here are the Tswana, who live in the Gauten, Free State, Northwest and Northern Cape Provinces of South Africa and in Botswana (meaning ?Tswanaland?), and the Southern Sotho, who live in and around Lesotho, an independent country completely surrounded by South Africa. The other main groups are the Northern Sotho, also called Pedi, who live in a large part of the Mpumalanga and Northern Provinces of South Africa, and lastly the Lozi, in the western part of Zambia, whose music has been very much acculturated to the instrumental styles of their neighbours ? the Chokwe, the Lunda and the Luba.
The Sotho and Nguni peoples were in the vanguard of the Bantu-language speakers in their southward movement into southern Africa over centuries, replacing the autochthonous Khoi (or Hottentot) and San (or Bushman) peoples as they went. They did not absorb the characteristic clicks of the Khoisan languages to the same extent as the Nguni, but strong traces of the old culture can be seen in their music and instruments, such as reedpipe groups and musical bows. The first musical bow is assumed to have been the San hunting bow, from which the others would first have been developed by the Khoi, then handed on to the Bantu-speakers, but this is an assumption based in the mists of time; we are unlikely ever to know for sure.
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