Mahlathini Nkabinde

Simon Nkabinde — known across the world as Mahlathini, the "Lion of Soweto" — was born in 1937 at Newcastle, in the Natal Midlands of what is now KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Sources record his birth year as 1937 (some give 1938), and the exact day is not reliably documented. His father died while Simon was still a boy, and the family's hardship forced him to leave school early. He grew up in Alexandra township outside Johannesburg, a crucible of black South African music.

As a youth his voice deepened into an extraordinary rumbling bass, so unusual that it was at first thought to be an affliction. He turned it into a signature. Singing in choirs — including one led by his brother Zeph — he mastered the "groaning" style, the basso profundo growl that would come to define mbaqanga, the electric township jive of the townships. By the late 1950s he had entered the professional recording world.

In 1964 Mahlathini joined with the harmonising Mahotella Queens and the Makgona Tsohle Band to forge one of South Africa's first supergroups. Across the 1960s his commanding voice became the principal male sound of township jive. After a period apart, the act reunited in 1983, and in the wake of Paul Simon's 1986 Graceland album Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens rose to international acclaim, touring the world's great stages.

He performed at the 1988 Nelson Mandela tribute concert and in New York in 1991, carrying the sound of South Africa's townships far beyond its borders. Mahlathini died in Johannesburg on 27 July 1999 from complications of diabetes. May the Lion of Soweto be honored — his deep voice still echoing through the music of his people.