With the removal of the slumyards beginning in the early 1930s and ending during the second half of the decade, the focus of African community life shifted to the freehold areas of Sophiatown and Alexandra. The sound of marabi music was original and improvisational.īlack Music and Musicians of the 40s and 50s It created the vivacity and the energy of the shebeen parties. Music was fundamental to the new culture of the yards. It used to start from Friday night right through to Sunday evening. You get your share of whatever concoction there is - and you dance.

This is how Wilson 'King Force' Silgee, a famous jazz saxophonist, described Marabi: The marabi dance parties became centres of community life and gave the African working classes a new sense of identity. It was centred on beer-brewing and shebeens. Marabi reflected the way of life of the people living in the slumyards. In the 1920s and 1930s the urban culture of the slumyards, centred in Doornfontein in Johannesburg, was known as marabi, possibly derived from the township of Marabastad in Pretoria.

It was here that the most important developments in indigenous jazz took place.

Music was a central feature of the urban culture that developed in Johannesburg and in Sophiatown in particular.

The definition of township in africa