Hold Fast

Here is a video of JL Zwane Church mem­bers singing the song in 2023:

Bambelela bass:

Bambelela tenor:

https://dev.protestinharmony.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Bambelela-tenor.wav

Bambelela alto:

https://dev.protestinharmony.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Bambelela-alto.wav

Bambelela soprano:

https://dev.protestinharmony.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Bambelela-sop.wav 

Origins and context

Bam­belela was writ­ten by mem­bers of the JL Zwane Memo­r­i­al Church in the Gugulethu area of Cape Town in South Africa. It was sung dur­ing the HIV-AIDS cri­sis of the late 1990s and ear­ly 2000s to encour­age hope in their com­mu­ni­ty. The JL Zwane Memo­r­i­al Church, along with many oth­er church groups through­out South Africa, was cen­tral to fight­ing stig­ma, sup­port­ing peo­ple and edu­cat­ing com­mu­ni­ties dur­ing the HIV-AIDS cri­sis, and music was a big part of both sup­port and edu­ca­tion. Bam­belela was sung on a week­ly basis dur­ing this time, and became a song that was sung all across South Africa in this con­text as well.

Bam­belela was (and still is) sung dur­ing the sec­tion of the church ser­vice where com­mu­ni­ty mat­ters are addressed – a sort of pub­lic notice­board and edu­ca­tion space dur­ing which updates and infor­ma­tion about HIV-AIDS par­tic­u­lar­ly were shared at this time. More recent­ly, infor­ma­tion about Covid would have been shared dur­ing this time as well. Bam­belela is sung to help pre­pare peo­ple to hear poten­tial­ly dif­fi­cult news or infor­ma­tion; to feel that how­ev­er dif­fi­cult what they are about to hear might be, that they can hold on to their faith and hold on to hope.

Dur­ing the HIV-AIDS cri­sis many peo­ple were them­selves affect­ed or had loved ones who were infect­ed or who had died. The mes­sag­ing that Bam­belela helped to car­ry was that “it is ok to be affect­ed and infect­ed, It’s not the end of the world… In the midst of chal­lenges and obsta­cles in life, nev­er give up, even in the dark val­leys, nev­er give up… Diag­no­sis is not the end. Some­thing bet­ter will hap­pen in the future. You can keep going. We can keep going together.”

Music and style

The ‘call’ for Bam­belela will sound dif­fer­ent depend­ing who is lead­ing the song. There isn’t a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ ver­sion of this, just the ver­sion that you are singing today. The same goes for the har­monies – these might change depend­ing who is singing, but the essence of the song remains the same. The song is always sung quite slow­ly and with grav­i­tas, giv­ing peo­ple time to real­ly feel the mean­ing deep in their bel­lies. The choir lead this song in the church ser­vice, and every­one joins in. You can hear the song here: https://youtu.be/8JF_tfKssdc

Words

The word ‘Bam­belela’ lit­er­al­ly means ‘hold fast’ and is in the Zulu lan­guage. The Eng­lish words ‘nev­er give up’ are also sung, alter­nat­ing with ‘bam­belela’. The pro­nun­ci­a­tion is ‘bam-beh-ley-la’ with the oth­er word in the song pro­nounced ‘bam-ba’.

Sharing the Song

Mem­bers of the JL Kwane Memo­r­i­al Church and choir are hap­py for oth­ers out­side of their com­mu­ni­ty to sing Bam­belela to help keep hope alive, par­tic­u­lar­ly where peo­ple are suf­fer­ing pain or injus­tice. You will find below some links to groups doing good work in South Africa where you can make a dona­tion in rec­om­pense for the shar­ing of this song. We can all car­ry this good work forward.

Links

You can find the JL Zwane Memo­r­i­al Church here, where you will also find livestream videos of their church ser­vices over the last few years (includ­ing fab­u­lous singing!): www.facebook.com/jlzwane/

You can make a dona­tion direct­ly to the JL Zwane Memo­r­i­al Church, who will use the mon­ey to sup­port peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing pover­ty in their com­mu­ni­ty, for exam­ple giv­ing food parcels to those in need. You can make an inter­na­tion­al trans­fer using ‘wise’: https://wise.com

Account name: JL Zwane Memo­r­i­al Church // SWIFT code: SBZAZAJJ // Account no.: 071323406

And a cou­ple of links to some oth­er organ­i­sa­tions doing vital work in South Africa who you can sup­port financially:

• AIDS Foun­da­tion of South Africa – www.aids.org.za/get-involved
• Masi­manyane Women’s Sup­port Cen­tre: www.masimanyane.org (Account name: Masi­manyane Women’s Sup­port Cen­tre // SWIFT Code: NEDSZAJJ // Account no.: 1210371839)

These notes were made by Pen­ny Stone in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Sakhele Plaatjie, Mfun­disi Matya Buy­iswa Maqhubela and Maxwell Lin­gani of the JL Zwane Memo­r­i­al Church in April 2023.