Xhosa music has long been a major part of the music of South Africa

Music of South Africa

The South African music scene includes both popular and folk forms. Pop styles are based on four major sources, Zulu isicathamiya singing and harmonic mbaqanga...

, especially in the field of jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

. There are many Xhosa clans, each with their own styles of drumming and dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

s.

NoFinish Dywili assisted from 1979 in Africanising local Christian liturgical music and the Ngqoko Women's Cultural Group helped preserve the Xhosa music of the village of Ngqoko, including the married woman's umngqungqo style, danced at the intonjane ceremony of girls' rites of passage. Professor Andrew Tracey, director of the International Library of African Music, commented on "the polyphonic singing, the three types of bow they play (including the uhadi gourd bow) the umngqokolo overtone singing". According to Tracey, the Khoisan had a big influence on this music.