Boom Shaka’s best-known vocalist has launched her debut CD single in style Charl Blignaut You can say what you like about Lebo Mathosa – and, heaven knows, much has been said about Lebo Mathosa – but after last week even her most insistent detractors will be hard- pressed to overlook her singular talents and simply relegate her to the status of bad girl of the kwaito generation. With the impeccable launch of Intro, her debut solo CD single, in Johannesburg last week, Boom Shaka’s most visible vocalist finally took her rightful place as heir apparent to Brenda Fassie; the next in a long line of women who have risen against the odds to dominate local pop. At first, Intro may seem to lack a surefire Boom Shaka-style hit, but you soon realise its power lies in how it’s able to highlight Lebo’s natural lyric-writing ability and showcase a new maturity in her distinctive voice. It also contains a bunch of collaborations that bode well for the future. Because Intro is just the precursor to Lebo’s debut full- length album, which is scheduled for release in October. The showstopper on Intro is Khumbule Khaya, a modern traditional ballad. It’s performed as a duet with Kora Award-winner Ringo Madlingozi (and remixed as a more than passable, infinitely danceable, thumpy, downtempo house track by stalwart DJ Christos Katzaitis). You’d think that a collaboration with a more traditional, adult contemporary artist like Ringo would be included to add credibility to the pop tart persona of a younger Lebo. Actually, it works both ways. Musically, each brings an equal amount to the equation, each complementing the other perfectly. If anything, Khumbule Khaya shows that, as an artist, Lebo Mathosa has started to grow up. What makes a seasoned hack like myself most optimistic about the whole affair, though, is the launch event itself. In all my years of watching launches come and go, artists fizzle and pop, I can’t recall attending an album launch quite as slick and effortless as Lebo’s. Late at night in an upmarket downtown venue with a star-studded guestlist, Lebo hardly missed a step as she kept up with a powerhouse team of dancers led by Boom Shaka’s Thembi Seete. Lebo designed the entire show herself, with choreographic input from her dancers, vocal assistance from a team of divine backing mamas and some last-minute styling assistance from rising fashion guru Felipe, who described the show as “Soweto meets Las Vegas”. Channel O, Selimathunzi, Studio Mix and Live@Five jostled for camera positions. The crowd lapped it up.
Probably because Boom Shaka have retained the limelight for so long and also because Lebo started out so young – 14 years old – it’s easy to forget she’s only 23. It’s too easy to sensationalise her every catfight and to forget that she is steadily setting new industry standards for independent artists – particularly independent female artists. It’s been a struggle. She’s had to fight off sexual abuse from her first handlers – lecherous older men who ignored the fact that she has a songwriting brain, tried to make all her professional decisions for her and then proceeded to make sexual demands on her. She’s survived a stabbing by a demented fan, betrayal by her closest friends and she’s risen above the sexual stereotyping that comes with the way Boom Shaka chose to market themselves. Despite her string of hits – from Magasman to Lerato; It’s About Time to Free – it’s taken years to become financially independent. Today Lebo may drive a nifty silver city Jeep and own her own house, but still, every cent she has earned over the last few years has been invested in her new project. She’s taking the risks, but she’ll also reap the benefits if her solo career takes off. Meeting her a few days after the launch, a disarmingly coy and gratefully well-rested Lebo is cautiously thrilled about where she’s at. She relates how, when she was a teenager performing as a dancer in a trio called LMT, Fassie pulled her up on stage in Soweto and asked her to dance in her show.
‘Miriam Makeba, Letta Mbuli, Sibongile Khumalo, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Busi Mhlongo, Gloria Bosman, Thandiswa from Bongo Maffin … all of them have been an inspiration,” she says. “But of them all it was Brenda who taught me how to survive, how never to give up, how important it is to handle the industry so that you are in control of your music – and not some old men deciding for you.” What few people realise is that Lebo has licensed her solo work entirely to herself through her Mathosa Music label. She paid for it all and then signed a deal with her distributor and marketer, Bula Records. There are very few artists in this town – and even fewer women in their early 20s – who have come to control their own output this way. It’s thanks in part to the right management and in part to the self-empowerment that kwaito has brought to the marketplace. But more than anything, it’s thanks to Lebo Mathosa.
During a brief break in the interview – as an insistent waitress in the Norwood coffee shop gets Lebo to pose for a photograph – Lebo’s manager, Phindi Mkhabela of Bula Music, sums it up: “The thing about Lebo,” she says, “is that thing she has inside. It’s like being able to walk into a shop and know exactly what dress to buy without asking anyone else’s opinion or having to try it on first. Lebo always knows exactly what she wants.” Or, in Lebo’s own words – lyrics from the first song to be released from Intro, called Spiritual Freedom:”Stay true to yourself, be an example, perseverance, dedication, preservation, constantly working hard…” Hardly the musings of the “oversexed kwaito brat”the media still love to tag her.