Recordings of Mohapeloa

Bio

The Mohapeloa (1908-1982) Recordings is a collection of private recordings, and a number of competition videos that contain recordings of Joshua Pulumo Mohapeloa’s music. The South African Broadcasting Corporation in Johannesburg has 318 tracks of choirs singing titles by Mohapeloa, recorded between 1962 and 2004. Most of them were made in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and early 90s for the transcription service of SABC Radio Bantu. The collection features the first commercial CD of Mohapeloa's music. The CD was produced by Christine Lucia and issued early in 2014.

Mohapeloa was a member of the Bataung clan, born in Molumong in the eastern mountains of Lesotho on 28 March 1908. He was the third generation of a family converted to Christianity in the 19th century by the Swiss-French protestant missionaries from the Société des Missions Evangéliques chez les peuples non-chrétiens á Paris (SMEP), known in English as the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society (PEMS). He was the grandson of Rev Joel Mohapeloane Mohapeloa and his father was also Rev. Mohapeloa. Aside from some years in Johannesburg (1938-1943), he spent most of his life in Morija in the western lowlands of Lesotho.

Sources of information on his music include, most importantly, his own prefaces to the published songbooks where he explains his approach and aims. Most of these are in Sesotho, but there are also originals and English translations by Mantoa Smouse. Some early editions of Mohapeloa’s songbooks are available in Morija Museum and Archives, along with a great deal of other useful information about the history and culture of Lesotho.

Sources of information on Mohapeloa’s life include three unpublished essays: one of them, in the Morija Museum and Archives, is a long and richly detailed account of his life and music written in 1987 by J.M. Mohapeloa (his younger brother) and M.K. Phakisi. It is in Sesotho and is called ‘Likheleke tsa Pina Sesothong’.

In 1955, Morija Sesuto Book Depot published a collection of church songs called Hosanna (Hosannah) that contained eight hymns by Mohapeloa. One of them, ‘Molimo ke moea’ (God is the spirit) also became hymn no. 445 in a new edition of the well-established Sotho hymnal Lifela tsa Sione (Hymns of Zion).

There were other publishers in Lesotho, and in 1963 Mohapeloa chose to publish six new works in the book Binang ka thabo (Songs of Love), published by Mazenod Institute, the Catholic Press in Mazenod, outside Maseru. These include four songs that he later republished in 1976, in a volume of twenty-five songs brought out by Oxford University Press in Cape Town, called Meluluetsa ea ntšetso-pele le bosechaba Lesotho (Anthems for the development of the nation of Lesotho). Meluluetsa includes three songs previously published in Meloli II: ‘TY’, ‘Mafeteng’, and ‘Maseru’ – these all being place names.

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Recordings of Mohapeloa
Profile added by Ano Shumba on 19 Oct 2015
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