The Lesson of Ndikho - When Music Became a Weapon

My journey into African music did not begin in a classroom. It did not begin with ethnomusicology, anthropology, or a university lecture hall filled with neatly

outlined histories and assigned listening lists.

It began on the bandstand, in 1970.

That’s where I met Ndikho Xaba - a Zulu man from South Africa, living in exile,

carrying his country in his spirit and his struggle in his sound. I joined his band,

Ndikho and the Natives, and stepped into an education that no institution could

have provided.

Ndikho was not just a musician. He was a mission - a political force, a cultural

messenger, a freedom fighter using rhythm instead of rifles. Forced out of South

Africa under apartheid, he carried with him the urgency to expose and challenge a

system built to organize, separate, and suppress human beings based on race. And

he chose music as his weapon.

He formed The Natives as his vehicle, his instrument beyond the instrument. The first lesson I learned from him had nothing to do with scales or technique. It was about purpose. Music could be more than entertainment. It could be a tool of communication, a form of resistance, an educator, and a call to consciousness.

That idea was not entirely foreign. I had heard echoes of it in the music of Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye, and even earlier in the spirituals and coded songs of enslaved Africans. But with Ndikho, it was immediate and unapologetic.

He taught us through Zulu folk songs, South African popular music, and his own

compositions shaped by exile and resistance. I came to understand that African

music was not just a style - it was a system of thought.

Ndikho explained apartheid in simple terms:

whites at the top, “coloreds” in the middle, and Blacks at the bottom. He spoke about the word “native” as a label meant to diminish and control - and then he reclaimed it. Naming the band The Natives was an act of transformation, much like the Black Power movement in America had

reclaimed the word “Black.” Identity, I learned, is not fixed. It can be redefined

through culture, language, and sound.

The band itself was a crossroads of the African diaspora. Ndikho played piano, sang,

and performed on percussion, sometimes using instruments he built himself. I

played saxophones and flute. Around us were musicians from different geographies

and histories, unified by a single pulse.

Ndikho’s background in theater shaped our performances. We didn’t just play

music - we staged it. We dramatized history, including powerful reenactments like

the Battle of Isandlwana. Through sound, movement, and voice, we transformed the

stage into living history. The music was not just heard - it was embodied.

We used costumes, dance, and call-and-response with the audience, dissolving the

boundary between performer and listener. The goal was not perfection - it was

energy. Ndikho taught us that energy could outweigh precision, that spirit could

carry more truth than correctness.

At certain moments, something deeper would enter the room.

This was not abstract. When the rhythm locked and the audience became part of the sound, there was a shift - a crossing. The music became a meeting place between

worlds.

I began to hear connections everywhere. In John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Archie

Shepp, Mongo Santamaría, and Babatunde Olatunji, I heard the same current. These

were not separate traditions. They were continuations.

African music had traveled through the Middle Passage, through survival and

transformation, into spirituals, blues, jazz, and soul. And now it was re-emerging

consciously in new forms.

Artists like Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela stood as bridges across the diaspora.

At the center of it all was the drum - polyrhythm, dance, improvisation, call and

response, energy.

Ndikho taught us not to fear extremes, not to fear repetition. In African music,

repetition was not limitation - it was transformation. We would hold grooves until

they moved beyond the mind and into the body, until the audience lived inside the

rhythm.

In that space, beauty was redefined - not as lyricism alone, but as intention, focus,

and collective energy.

What Ndikho gave me was more than music. He gave me a framework to understand

music as history, identity, politics, spiritual practice, and community ritual - all at

once. And once you learn that, you cannot go back. Music is no longer just entertainment.

It is a force - a living continuum.

After leaving Ndikho’s group, I formed my own band, Juju.

Not as a departure, but as a continuation. The name itself spoke to spirit, energy, and the unseen made audible. With musicians from The Natives and new collaborators like Babatunde Lea, we committed ourselves to African principles. We studied deeply with Bill Summers,

exploring African, Afro-Cuban, and Brazilian rhythms. We came to understand that

rhythm is architecture - a model of community and coexistence.

Juju developed its own identity within the avant-garde jazz movement, not as

imitation but as integration -guided by Africa, grounded in the present.

As the music expanded, so did the circle. I connected with Hugh Masekela,

Okyerema Asante, and many others across the African diaspora. Through these

collaborations, I came to understand that these musics - jazz, soul, Afrobeat,

highlife - are not separate. They are branches of the same tree.

Rooted in Africa. Shaped by history. Alive in the present.

I jammed with Fela Kuti, performed with King Sunny Adé, and recorded with artists

across the diaspora. Each experience reinforced the same truth: there is no

separation.

What I was experiencing was a living continuum.

And in that continuum, my role shifted - from student to participant, from observer

to bridge.

Because once you understand that music carries history, you understand that it

carries responsibility. And the question becomes: what will you do with it?

For me, the answer was Juju. The answer was Oneness of Juju. The answer was to

continue the work - not just to play the music, but to live it.