The African nation of Swaziland, located in between South Africa and Mozambique, is an ancient land dominated by the Swazi people. They are known for a variety of folk music, as well as modern rock, pop and hip hop.
The two biggest ceremonies in Swaziland are Incwala, which takes place in December, and Umhlanga, which takes place in August. Umhlanga features a dance unique to Swazi women, who cut reeds as part of the five-day ceremony. There is also music for harvesting, marriages and other events. Traditional instruments include the kudu horn, calabash, rattles and reed flute.
Beginning in the 1990s, Swaziland became host to a burgeoning hip hop scene, led by bands like Vamoose. Neighboring South Africa has provided some of the impetus, since various kinds of hip hop are very popular there.
The Kingdom of Swaziland is a small country in southern Africa (one of the smallest on the continent), situated on the eastern slope of the Drakensberg mountains, embedded between South Africa in the west and Mozambique in the east.
Swaziland offers a wide variety of landscapes, from the mountains along the Mozambican border to savannas in the east and rainforest in the northwest.
Surrounded by South Africa, except for a short border with Mozambique, Swaziland is heavily dependent on South Africa from which it receives nine-tenths of its imports and to which it sends more than two-thirds of its exports.
African music from south of the Sahara is distinct from North African music.
Finally, the timing in African music is distinctive because of its use of the time-line, a short pattern of several, asymmetrically spaced strokes on an iron bell, the rim of a drum, or a glass bottle.
Music in this region is also distinctive for its use of a large number of musical bows (bow-shaped instruments with one string), complex vocal polyphony, and a general tendency not to use "hot" drumming.
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