The two Jewish women behind legendary Ipi Ntombi

Written by Bertha Egnos and her daughter, Gail Lakier, both of whom have since passed away, Ipi Ntombi was an internationally celebrated musical that first opened in South Africa in 1974. With a tribute website marking the show’s 50th anniversary, Egnos’s second daughter, academic Lucille Lakier, recalls how a play with an all-African cast became a global phenomenon amid oppressive apartheid restrictions.

Mama Tembu’s Wedding; Ipi Ntombi. These are just some of the hit songs that underpinned the success of one of South Africa’s greatest musical exports. However, these songs initially had a very different purpose. “In the early 1970s, a company approached my mom and Gail,” Lakier says.

“This big American star, Eartha Kitt, was coming to South Africa, and they wanted some music that she would be able to integrate into her stage show.” Up-tempo and distinctive, these songs didn’t reflect Kitt’s sultry style, so she rejected them. Yet that was just the beginning.

A record company really liked the music, and contracted the mother-daughter duo to write more songs, which led to the release of a successful album, The Warrior. “They then took a team of African dancers and singers to Australia, and performed the songs there,” Lakier recalls. “It was very successful, but the impresario who brought them out took all the proceeds and skipped the country, a matter that went to court years later. Yet, at the time, my mom had to get the whole cast back to South Africa, and she actually mortgaged our house to do this.”

Soon after their return at the end of 1973, someone suggested to Egnos that she and Gail further develop the show and so, Ipi Ntombi was born. Lakier, who moved to the United States with her now ex-husband in the late 1960s, was visiting South Africa during this period. “I was there the whole time they were writing, and Gail would say, ‘Mommy, try this’, and mommy tried that. My mom could do anything on the piano.”

Hailing from a musical family in which she and all her brothers and sisters played different instruments, Egnos had played the piano since childhood. “She even played on the BBC in 1929,” says Lakier. “She left school at a very early age, started a music studio, and began teaching.”

Gail was equally talented. “She was always interested in music and musicals.” Gail and Egnos collaborated on their first production when Gail was just 15 – she wrote the lyrics and her mother the music.

Their most notable success before Ipi Ntombi was Dingaka. It was staged at then well-known Brian Brook Theatre in the 1960s, and was later adapted into a movie by Jamie Uys. “The stage version was an all-black show, but I think at that time, apartheid wasn’t that stringent so it wasn’t that difficult to manage,” Lakier says.

Yet when Ipi Ntombi came about, working with an all-black cast was far more of a challenge. “It was traumatic, because the 1970s was the deepest, darkest time of apartheid. They struggled to find places to rehearse, and used basements in different locations. Then they found a warehouse on the opposite side of Johannesburg. They had to arrange special transport for the cast as most of them lived in Soweto. Many could rehearse only after 17:00 because they had day jobs, often as nannies or delivery people. Ninety percent of them had no stage experience or any training at all.”

Lakier attended each rehearsal. “The energy, the enthusiasm, it’s not like they just went through the motions, it was always exciting,” she says. Though they had to make concessions to the government’s censor board, Ipi Ntombi finally opened in March 1974 to an all-white audience. While it had a slow start, after two weeks, the show exploded and ultimately ran at the Brian Brook Theatre for three years, constantly attracting full houses.

South African casts travelled the world, including a five-year run on London’s West End and an 18-month stint in Las Vegas. It also was incredibly successful in places including Israel, Canada, parts of Europe, and in Nigeria and Zimbabwe. “But when they opened on Broadway in New York, there were all kinds of protests,” Lakier, who personally witnessed this, says. “Protesters were standing outside with placards saying, ‘If you buy a ticket, you’re killing an African child’; that the show was an instrument of the government; and it was trying to mask the pain of apartheid.”

Yet that couldn’t have been further from the truth, Lakier says. Gail had, in fact, originally written a song with lyrics including, “I’m black, I’m so alone. This is my land, but not my home.” Yet they couldn’t include that in the play. “Gail and my mom absolutely knew that the only way it could be successful was if it didn’t have a political overtone,” Lakier says.

The show ultimately won multiple gold records – given to a song or album that has sold more than 500 000 units – and other international awards. “Not in their wildest dreams had the cast or my mom imagined they would be travelling around the world,” Lakier says. “I still don’t know how my mom managed to get passports for everyone at that time. Yet, it was the highlight of their lives.” A number of cast members remained overseas. Many of those who returned to South Africa became well-established in the theatre world.

The show was revived in 1997, and for the first time in South Africa, played to a mixed-race audience. “One reason why Ipi was originally so successful is that my mom had such a feel for African music,” Lakier says. Yet when Egnos was invited to do a talk about how she could write music with such an African feel, she turned down the invitation. “She said to me, ‘Intellectually, I can’t describe how I do it. It’s more instinctual – it’s a feeling’.”