Caiphus Semenya
b. 21 June 1941, Alexandra Township, Johannesburg, South Africa. An occasional recording artist under his own name, Semenya has played a major role in the development of South African popular music, mainly as a producer and composer. He has produced or co-produced albums for fellow South Africans Letta Mbulu, Hugh Masekela and Myriam Makeba, and has composed material recorded by a host of artists including Mbulu, Masekela, Makeba, Cannonball Adderley, Lou Rawls, Stanley Turrentine, Herb Alpert, Nina Simone, Quincy Jones and Harry Belafonte. With Quincy Jones he composed and arranged all the African music heard in the television series ROOTS. Semenya first became involved with the South African music scene at the age of 13 when he was hired as an assistant by the legendary itinerant township disc jockey Mabaso. A year later his family moved from Alexandra to Benoni Township in the East Rand, where in 1955 he joined a vocal quartet known as the Dining Brothers (later known as the Katsenjammer Kids). Within three years the group became one of black South Africa's leading line-ups, performing at township functions throughout the country. In 1959 Semenya left the group to pursue a solo career, and was hired as a singer/actor in the original production of the seminal township musical KING KONG.In 1961 at the conclusion of KING KONG'Shugely successful tour of the UK, Semenya returned to South Africa and from 1962 to 1964 took part in many concerts, operas and plays sponsored by the black musicians’ trade union/cultural pressure group the Union of South African Artists. 
In 1964, he joined the cast of the musical SPONONO,which followed its Johannesburg season with a short run on Broadway. When the company returned to South Africa, Semenya, who had by this time had as much as he could stomach of working conditions under apartheid, decided to stay behind in the USA. In 1970, with fellow South African expatriates Masekela and Jonas Gwanga, he co-founded the group Union Of South Africa (a memorable but short-lived band which folded following the lengthy hospitalization of Gwanga after he was injured in a hit-and-run car accident). In 1980, he formed his own production company, Munjale, whose first release was Mbulu's SOUND OF A RAINBOW. In 1983, he released his first own-name album, LISTEN TO THE WIND,a brilliant combination of a wide variety of musical styles, including black South African mbaqanga, American blues, traditional Zulu folk songs and reggae.