Tu Nokwe has released her second album. GLYNIS O’HARA talks to her
`I CAN’T take jazz musicians, they criticise so much. And I used to listen to a lot of jazz as well as mbaqanga … but all you do is get insecure around jazz musicians. They think they own music, you know!”
The person speaking is Tu Nokwe, a woman who’s been involved with music ever since she was a child and who has just released her second album, Inyaka Inyaka. . Sporting traditional dress for the launch of her album, a delicate string of beads is looped across her face between her nose and ear studs, as she talks.
Her family home in KwaMashu, KwaZulu-Natal, literally pulsated with rhythm and harmony. Both parents were musical and “there were always musicians in the house. Gibson Kente and his artists were always practising there.” As was pianist Bheki Mseleku, the most successful South African jazz artist around today, who’s been a family friend for 17 years.
“He used to practise like a fanatic in our house. You’d go for a glass of water in the middle of the night and there he’d be – still playing at 3am.” Indeed, now teaching at the University of Natal, Durban, he’s still like that, she says.
Her father, Alfred, was in jazz swing bands of the 1950s and 1960s and her mother, Patty, was a mezzo soprano. It was she who taught all her children to sing.
Alfred was also much used as a master of ceremonies and soon he was bringing along his singer daughters, Tu and Maralyn, with their friend, Nonhlanhla, who dubbed themselves the Black Angels. At the height of apartheid a name like that would’ve been enough to cause apoplexy in the Dutch Reformed Church.
And out of the singing group grew the Amajika Youth project, “teaching kids drama, dance and self-respect”. Seven members of the first class went on to join Mbongeni Ngema’s Sarafina, including Leleti Khumalo.
Nokwe recently brought the Amajika school up to Johannesburg, where it ran in the Smal Street Methodist Church. There were courses in morals, music reading, singing, dancing, acting and “really just in freeing yourself to be creative”, she said. But she had to stop due to the demands of her album and her first baby.
Her new album, which also features the talents of Bayete producer/songwriter Thapelo Khomo and the band’s lead singer, Jabu Khanyile, is a classy act, choosing musical delicacy over dancefloor beats and coming up trumps with tracks such as the superb duet with Khanyile, Ubuntu.
A guitarist and songwriter, Nokwe has been busy on this album since 1992, with various remixes and post-post-productions. So no one can accuse her of rushing it. It includes the work of the late Princess Magogo, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s mother, a classical Zulu singer. Nokwe rearranged and rewrote two of her songs, Umelelwe and a love song, Isiqomqomane, now called River.
But while Nokwe loves music, she never forgets its role in society: “I think artists should be role models for the young, not just use their name for riches but teach and lead. Young people tend to listen to artists.”
Later, she adds: “Why is it rich, famous artists often end up self-destructive? … If artists don’t use their fame positively, they will end up destroying themselves.”
The album deals with social issues such as crime and violence, and on the CD insert she invites people to write to her and respond to the lyrics. “It’s not just talk, I will answer the letters. I want to know how and what people think and what solutions they can suggest.”
She has called her three-month-old child Nirvana and the name accurately reflects mother’s state of mind about her arrival. She was so determined to have a baby, she says, that she was actually interviewing men as prospective dads – with a view to non- involvement – before an ex-boyfriend reappeared.
But the name also hints at her vegetarianism and spiritual beliefs. “I try to live by a spiritual path, but I study different kinds of ways. I like the Quan Yin method, a quiet Chinese way of meditation and living in the world. I’ve been doing different kinds of meditation for years but stayed with this because I didn’t like vocalising my prayers.”
She’s been vegetarian for 17 years, except for a short period of eating white meat, and she does yoga as well. Hardly your average KwaMashu girl. She is, she says, “a bit of a world citizen … I went to London by myself at the age of 17 and I learnt a lot.” She’s also spent a few years in New York at the Manhattan School of Music. Being vegetarian does get her into some delicate situations though, when it comes to things like ritual or celebratory sacrifices. But the ancestors, she says, “are wiser now … I think they understand new and different attitudes to animals.
“When I was to have my baby, they were going to slaughter for me at home. I have to respect my family and their beliefs. They said to me that if there was karma involved it would be on them, not me and they did not expect me to eat the meat. So they respected me too … I had to meditate hard on handling the old and the new.”