The Face of Africa fashion show on May 26 will be a landmark in the career of acclaimed composer Zwai Bala
Thebe Mabanga
The music scene is littered with tales of acts it’s inappropriate to call them artists who promise much but fail to live up to the hype. The scene also has a number acts you can call them artists whose talent can survive a setback as big as a flopped debut album.
South Africans, and soon the world, should be thankful that TKZee, and more importantly Zwai Bala, fall into the latter category. For TKZee as we know them today almost did not happen.
The group released their debut album, Take It Eezy, in 1996 with class and pedigree that tipped them for success. Tokollo Tshabalala had just tasted relative success with Mashamplani under the tutelage of kwaito heavyweight Mdu Masilela. Kabelo Mabalane was fresh from a music education exchange programme in the United States. Bala had just spent a year studying music at the Royal Academy in Scotland. His venture was the result of a scholarship he had obtained after a stint with the Drankensberg Boys’ Choir as their first black lead singer and a major contributor in altering their repertoire to include African traditional music.
The trio’s talents were brought to bear on an album that had hip-hop, R&B and kwaito lyrical influences. Sadly it flopped. In retrospect, only because of the success they have gone on to achieve, it is plausible to suggest that the album was ahead of its time.
Lance McCormack, artist development manager for BMG Africa, recalls the near-end. “The fact that we had worked with Zwai since his high school days helped. We knew what TKZee could do and that is why we stuck by them.”
What Zwai was capable of was shown earlier, in 1994, when he released Zwai, a gospel-orientated album that was nominated for a South African Music Award (Sama) and lost a category that was won by Rebecca Malope. It feels very much like losing to Tiger Woods.
To redesign their path to stardom, TKZee used the most innovative build-up to an album release we have seen during the kwaito decade. With patience and astute timing, they teased the market for a year before dropping Halloween at the end of 1998.
In December 1997 the boys released Phalafala, with an intelligent sample of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi. The EP generated enough momentum to take them through to Easter 1998. Just when the acclaim was beginning to die down, the guys looked to that year’s Soccer World Cup for inspiration.
In collaboration with soccer star Benni McCarthy, and with a sample of The Final Countdown, they gave Bafana Bafana a rousing send-off with Shibobo. It kept their names on people’s lips from midyear to early spring, and thus Halloween was anticipated with palpable eagerness.
Thankfully, they did not disappoint. When the history of kwaito music is documented, Halloween will take its place in the top 10 albums comfortably. The group’s talents were rewarded with a record four Samas, three for Halloween and one for their best-selling kwaito single, Shibobo.
Through all of this, Bala remained the creative anchor of the phenomenon. TKZee’s success has spawned a seven-member family, which includes Bala’s younger brother and R&B starlet Loyiso another graduate of the Drankensberg Boys’ Choir.
The siblings also happen to be the first two artists signed to Bala+, their new record label under which Zwai will release Lifted Vol. 1, his first solo album in eight years. The title suggests there are other instalments to come, and on the evidence of this delivery that cannot be a bad thing.
The album again draws on a gospel influence and Bala seems to treats gospel as a music genre rather than a holy grail to be constrained by formulae and appreciated without question. The album then abandons religion on songs like Taiwa Touch, laced with a tinge of tragedy when one considers that it was co-written with his now departed long-time collaborator, Moses Taiwa Molelekwa.
The album will be launched at this year’s Face of Africa finals in Sun City next Saturday.
Bala will showcase his talents alongside the Burundi drummers and world music star Youssou N’dour. An estimated audience of 20-million in 44 African countries will watch the event live.
The Face of Africa finals is a culmination of an African odyssey undertaken by producer Jan Malan and Ipetla Moatshe. The duo went to 30 African countries in search of the face of the continent.
Their adventure sprung up wonderful surprises, such as in Cameroon where, having cast about 70 modeling hopefuls, a probably tired casting agent showed them Natalie Demba at a hotel reception, and they promptly chose her as one of their West African finalist. Demba now joins 23 continental peers who hope to win a $200 000, four-year modelling contract and follow in the footsteps of Nigeria’s Oluchi Onweagba, the inaugural winner who went on to grace a Manhattan skyscrapper as a model for the clothing label GAP.
As they vie for catwalk glory, Zwai Bala a prodigious talent who has delivered on his potential by remaining focused will begin in earnest a journey to international stardom that has been a decade in the making.
The Face of Africa finals will be televised live on M-Net on May 26 at 7.30 pm. For more info visit www.faceofafrica.co.za