A spirit walk with Kelly Khumalo

The first notes of Nganeno arrive not gently, but with a kind of ancestral authority. A Spanish flamenco guitar riff slices through the air like a message carried by wind – unexpected, foreign yet familiar in its intensity. 

And before I can even settle into its rhythm, something stirs in me. A knowing. A pull. A whisper that this album, Rebirth, is not merely another release from Kelly Khumalo; it is a portal and ceremony, a quiet revolution.

Moments later, beneath the lace of flamenco chords, the unmistakable pulse of the Mozambican Marrabenta rises. It’s subtle but sovereign, like a grandmother clearing her throat before she begins to speak. Suddenly I am sitting between worlds: the Mediterranean sun of Spain on one shoulder, the dusty, red soil of Southern Africa on the other. Nganeno becomes an embodiment of everything Khumalo has come to represent – a vessel in transit, a spiritual archive in motion.

And honestly? From the first bar, I knew we had something special.

Khumalo has never been one for creative complacency; she is a woman who wrestles with sound the way one wrestles with calling. Her artistic instinct has always leaned toward the edge, surprise, honesty and toward evolution. So the fusion should not shock me, yet it does. It shakes and awakens. But perhaps that is because this time, the experimentation is guided not by curiosity alone but by spirit.

“It was guidance,” she tells me in a tone that feels like prayer. “My journey of awakening and journey of spirituality – I am still discovering I carry Amakhosi. It comes through differently, and in this album, hence you hear the Spanish sound. I strongly feel my Spanish guides came through to add their part in Rebirth. If you listen carefully, you will hear sounds from up North in Africa. It is literally me encompassing who I am in the spirit.”

Her words hang heavy. They demand a stillness from me, the kind one needs when receiving wisdom. I realise then that Rebirth is not about trend nor genre nor commercial imagination. It is about memory. It is about inheritance. It is about identity in its metaphysical form.

By the time track four arrives, I have already surrendered to the journey. And then Mangingakhohlwa begins, soft like smoke, ancient like dust.

It sounds like Amahubo. Sounds like the trembling voices of elders gathered around a flickering candle. Sounds like the hymn book your grandmother kept wrapped in cloth. There is a rawness to it, a reverence and sacredness. It doesn’t feel written; it feels delivered.

Amahubo, some say, are ancient spiritual hymns passed down through generations. That is precisely how Khumalo received Mangingakhohlwa.

“How I was given this song…” she begins, pausing as though the memory itself requires ceremony. “I went down to my Ndumba to pray as usual. But that day was different. I was guided to go. I felt the urge to pray about being grateful, to not forget uNkulunkulu when I get to the places I have prayed for, when success begins to feel sweet.”

Then came that word.

“Ungakhohlwa. Do not forget. Masekumnandi ungakhohlwa. When things go well, do not forget.”

She takes a breath before continuing. “I could literally hear my late grandmother say, ‘Listen, stop praying. Go upstairs and record this so you do not forget.’ She gave me the melody. It could have been anything, but because of how it was given… it is old. You can hear it.”

This moment stays with me long after she says it. Because to receive a song that way is to be entrusted with a message, not a melody. It places you somewhere between medium and musician – between earth and sky. Yet something so sacred is often the hardest to share.

Khumalo admits she feared presenting the song to her producer, Mondli Ngcobo. “I was so insecure,” she says. “I thought he would downplay what I had.”

But when she finally played it for him, he simply said: “Oh my God.” And from there, the song grew, deepened, unfurled into its full spiritual stature.

What makes Mangingakhohlwa remarkable is its deceptive simplicity. Few elements, no excessive production, yet it taps directly into memory, into the muscle of ritual. It feels like the kind of hymn your grandmother did not teach you but that your bones somehow know.

This is Ngcobo’s true genius: carrying messages in song with respect, with sensitivity, with an ear tuned to both the physical and metaphysical world.

“It is very important for me to work with Mondli,” Khumalo says. “I always need spiritual people around me, people who can understand things that cannot be understood in the physical world. That’s why he has been my executive producer for so long.”

Their partnership feels less like work and more like divinely orchestrated recognition. She tells me Ngcobo “saw her before she saw herself” and in that seeing, she was permitted to meet her own spiritual power.

Across her ten previous albums, we have witnessed Khumalo assert her vocal prowess, sometimes tender and sometimes thunderous but always undeniable. Yet with Rebirth, something shifts.

There is a softness. A stillness. A restraint that feels intentional and deeply spiritual.

“With this album, I was asked to sing less,” she says. “That was the challenge.”

Singing less? For someone whose voice has long been her signature weapon? I push her to explain.

“Singing less means letting go of the need to prove anything. I am no longer trying to show my vocal highness. That time has passed. I have earned my stripes. I have no point to prove. Now we focus on the message.”

And suddenly the softness makes sense.

When one evolves, one does not shout. One hums. One breathes. One listens.

The message becomes the vessel. The voice becomes the river that carries it.

Khumalo is one of the last artists in South Africa who still treats the tracklist as an art form. Nothing lands accidentally; each song is positioned to build a coherent emotional and spiritual journey.

“I sit and listen,” she says. “The next song must make sense. It must tie in beautifully. It must be an experience and not shock therapy.”

This meticulous care is why Rebirth feels like a guided walk: you do not simply hear it, you are taken somewhere.

When I ask which song surprised her most in its evolution, she doesn’t hesitate.

“Ayenyuka,” she says. “In the studio, it was just a simple melody. But once it was mixed, after things were added, it became something else entirely.”

She says the transformation reminded her of George Michael and Mary J Blige – two artists who know the power of emotional sophistication in sound. “I couldn’t believe how transformed it was,” she says. “I loved it.”

Despite the new challenges, she says the making of the album “breezed” in its own way.

“I saw the importance of aligning spiritually. If you are a singer, it means there were singers in your lineage who passed the gift to you. But if you are not aligned with those people, it becomes difficult.”

Alignment, she says, is the reason she sometimes enters the studio with no lyrics, no concept—yet songs flow like water.

“I shock myself sometimes. Things fall into place simply because I am aligned with the owners of the gift. And the best way to honour them is to use the gift.”

These words feel like the thesis of Rebirth: honour as creation. Creation as calling. Calling as remembrance.

Before our conversation ends, I ask her what Rebirth reveals about where she is in this season of her life.

Her response is quiet but firm.

“I know now that I am not about entertainment. This is a tool to communicate a far greater message. I have had to accept that I am not like everyone else. I am not called to follow trends. I am called to deliver a message that God and my ancestors want me to communicate.”

This is not arrogance. It is acceptance. Acceptance of a spiritual assignment. Acceptance of being different. Acceptance of being guided.

And perhaps obedience is the truest form of rebirth.