TELEVISION REVIEW : The Queens: Fab Energy, Spontaneity

Ready for a round of “Name That Band”?

Clue: A group of friends who formed a group that synthesized various styles in a way quite unlike anyone before them and left audiences ecstatic upon their debut in 1964.

Got it? If you named the Mahotella Queens, you’re well-versed in the important players of contemporary Afro-pop.

If you chose that group of lads from Liverpool, well, that’s OK. While the Queens aren’t quite the Beatles of mbaqanga music, the South African trio certainly communicates as much energy, joy and good humor as the Fab Four ever did. They are on stage for an hour in the latest installment of “The Lonesome Pine Specials” (Thursday at 10 p.m., KOCE Channel 50), an eclectic music and dance series originating from the Kentucky Center for the Arts in Louisville.

Foremost in the Queens’ dynamic performance is the music itself. It has the rhythmic drive of township jive, tightly woven harmonies and choreography derived from Zulu ceremonial chants and dances. Every element seems carefully integrated, yet one never loses a sense of the spontaneous joy that can come only from musicians who are living in the moment, not replicating the same performance night after night.

The group somehow manages to stay connected to its roots in folk tradition while applying contemporary arrangements and presentational elements, some borrowed from Western pop, that make this music as current as the nightly news.

“In our music, we don’t forget our roots,” says Sam Marubini, guitarist of the Makgona Tsohle Band (literally “The Band That Knows Everything”) that accompanies the Queens. “This is not only street music,” he notes during one of the show’s brief yet informative between-song interviews. “We sing traditional songs as well.”

*

The word mbaqanga , he explains, is Zulu for a type of homemade bread made from several different ingredients all mixed together. In other words, mbaqanga is their version of a musical gumbo.

The songs are explored more in terms of structure than content, so we aren’t told much about their subjects (which often are traditional tribal ways, celebrated in overt or covert opposition to the social and political changes imposed by South Africa’s ruling white minority).

Nor do we learn the whereabouts of the Queens’ longtime collaborator Mahlathini; the gravelly voiced singer rates only a passing reference here. (Mahlathini, nicknamed “the Lion of Soweto,” reportedly is in poor health and has not toured with the Queens lately. Without his prowling, unapologetically masculine presence, the Queens lose an important counterpoint to their self-assured feminine sensuality.)

And it would have been interesting to hear from Queens lead singer Hilda Tloubatla whether it has been even harder for black women to carve out careers as musicians under apartheid than it has been for black men.

But for what this is--essentially a 45-minute performance amplified with comments from Tloubatla and Marubini--it is an excellent primer that rates a hearty “Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

* “The Lonesome Pine Special” airs Thursday at 10 p.m. on KOCE Channel 50.