Thandiswa Mazwai launches his fifth studio album on Saturday, wowing crowds at Carnival City's Big Top Arena
The arrival of the global coronavirus pandemic, which has hit the music industry hardest, has failed to inspire despair in revered and award-winning South African Afro-soul singer Thandiswa Mazwai.
In a wide range of interviews, citizenon the eve of the new album's release on Saturday. SankofaMazwai said the crisis had given him “quiet time to write down my thoughts about the new album.”
chance
Mazwai, who is expected to dazzle the crowd at Carnival City's Big Top Arena, said the coronavirus had given her an “impetus”. She said, “The trigger was probably COVID-19. She had time to be quiet, so she started doodling.”
“This is what brought it all together, and we started preparing it 12 years after releasing the album,” Mazwai said.
“I'm in the studio every day and have been working on this project for two years. The first session took place in May 2022,” she added.
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Album influence
With performances of typical Mazwai music with an African touch, music lovers attending the show will be in for a special treat.
“What you can expect to hear musically from the album are some recordings obtained from the International Library of African Music at Rhodes University.
“They provided me with some recordings of traditional Xhosa music, so I used that as the basis for the album and sampled little beats. Umugbe (traditional dance) and Uhadi (traditional musical instrument).
“I wanted to incorporate traditional West African instruments such as the bokra and ngoni into the music, so I went to Dakar, Senegal to record.
“We also held sessions in New York to strengthen this kind of three-dimensional dialogue between South Africa, Senegal and the United States.
“This concept began to speak to the transatlantic human trafficking that occurred during the slave trade.
“My connections with Africans in the diaspora – South Africans, Senegalese and African Americans in North America – have enhanced my conversations with people in those places,” Mazwai said.
Also read: New York will be filled with the sounds of Thandiswa Mazwai's new album this weekend
Descendants of Tami and Bered
The daughter of legendary journalists Tami Mazwai and Belede Mazwai found musical expression in her mother's death.
Mazwai said: “The inspiration for all my work comes from the trauma of losing my girlfriend's mother Belede when I was 16 years old.
“In my work, I try to convey everything and understand my feelings. I try to memorialize my mother in different ways.
“I have a deep passion for music, my country, my people and my continent, and that is what drives me.
“One of my favorite quotes is from Che Guaba, who says there is no great revolution without love.”
“Through Revolution of Love, I am trying to share my ideas and thoughts about what it means to be African. I am also trying to share my vision of what Africa could be in the future.”
“I think that’s what has appealed to people over the years.”
nostalgic
Although she is in her 20s, some older musicians probably respect her. “They often say they are very nostalgic, it reminds them of Sophiatown.
“I think there's always something in my work that brings together the old and the traditional. But it's very modern, and people love me for it.”
Born in the Eastern Cape in 1976 at the height of the student uprising against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, Mazwai grew up in Soweto and later studied English Literature and International Relations at Wits University.
“I was born to teenage parents who were never able to hold me in their arms.''Other than that, I grew up in Soweto with my parents and had a very normal upbringing.'' .
“I had a normal and privileged childhood because I was allowed to wear proper school shoes, not plastic ones,” she recalled.
She has shared the stage with music icons such as Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
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