Thebe Mabanga
music
Bongo Maffin remains one of kwaito’s most eclectic and captivating phenomenons. A recent example of this was provided when the group undertook a promotional tour for their latest album, Bongolution, last Friday.
Their guests of honour were about 20 children from Cotlands and Nkosi’s Haven two sanctuaries for HIV-positive kids whom they took to lunch at a central Jo’burg eatery before proceeding to the Southgate Shopping Centre.
Their star performer throughout the tour was Thandiswa Mazwai. Initially unaware of the presence of a lone journalist, her performance oscillated between being regal and playful.
Over lunch she enthusiastically unpacked and tried out the toys that come with the toddlers’ food and displayed genuine interest as she regaled the kids with witty antics.
She then took to playing chase-and-catch with the toddlers with unbridled energy. Whenever she paused to catch her breath, she would stride with grace and elegance only to break into action mode again when the young marauding troops came after her. Clearly the birth of her daughter Malaika 13 months ago has sharpened her maternal instincts. Throughout the eating and playing spell, band mates Appleseed and Stoan Seate took care of autograph seekers.
As the tour wound down at Southgate, Mazwai was among the first on the bus and there she reverted back to her regal self when she struck a fine pose with her legs crossed, arms spread apart and a sedated, motionless face. She jokingly refers to it as her “post orgasmic chill”.
This is not to suggest that Stoan and Appleseed do not weigh in with charm of their own. When they were negotiating a possible stampede to leave the Carlton Centre, Stoan kwaito’s baby-faced assassin with his Tswana rap lyrics left a young female admirer breathless with palpable awe.
Appleseed does not miss a chance to engage a young fan, whom he considers lucky to grow up in a democracy, nor does he take offence when another fan confesses to not knowing his name. He had difficulty leaving Southgate when a group of young girls wanted to feel his dreadlocks of some seven years.
These are the members of Bongo Maffin. Bongolution is their fifth album and the first since the departure of crooner Speedy to pursue a solo career. The group is diplomatic about his departure. At the album’s press launch, Mazwai firmly pointed out that the main difference with this album is that it is without Speedy, without being drawn into whether that makes it better.
When one looks at the gulf that exists between the group’s Afrocentric philosophy and Speedy’s, well, unashamedly Americanised image and perspective and the unapologetic fervour with which he admires stars like Sisqo, it is not hard to see how he might have grown frustrated. The subtlest admission that they have moved on is when Stoan says: “For the first time in a long time our way of thinking is correlated. When I say something I can safely say I am speaking for all of us.”
When they called themselves children of Azania, Speedy must have quivered uneasily. When they said ghetto, they thought Soweto, Mmabatho and Zimbabwe where Mazwai, Seate and Appleseed grew up Speedy thought Brooklyn.
Speedy has since released a solo album called Rumours with the now-defunct Primedia Records and is now with Arthur Mafokate 999 records, waiting to drop another project at month end.
For Bongolution the group spent four months cooking some serious Afro beats and have not deserted their trademark reggae- and pop-inspired vibe.
The album ranges from, as Mazwai points out, the playful to serious (not regal). “This album represents who we are at this stage as a group,” she says, obviously proud that they have stayed true to their unique sound and have never succumbed to temptation to sell out.
The group spreads the gospel that even in a world of BMWs, wireless application protocol (WAP) cellphones and palmtops, elements of African tradition have a place.
Their first hit off the album is The Way Kungakhona (The Way Things Are). The title has a playful mixture of English and Zulu that is too colloquial for Bongo Maffin. “But that is because it is how people in townships speak,” Mazwai points out.
It has a keyboard chord reminiscent of an earlier hit, Thati’ Sgubhu, from their third album Concerto. The members then jam around Mazwai’s jovial and unrestrained vocals before saxophonist McCoy Mrubata makes a surprise, but very welcome, appearance.
A question that has captured audience’s imagination is when Mazwai will record a solo. She dismisses that as something that “will happen sometime, not now. Besides, all three of us have done solo tracks on this album,” implying that the question should apply with equal force to other members.
The truth though is her voice is the most readily applicable to a solo, evident in Supa Lava and Will You Be There.
Stoan and Appleseed are both thoroughly outstanding in their vocal technique, but it is hard to imagine either sustaining a full-length solo. On this album, they contribute The Only One and Gudo Guru (Big Baboon).
Now South Africa’s children of the ghetto go to the international stage in a big way when they take to the United States in July and August. The highlight will be the Summer Stage in Central Park, New York, and Reggae on the River in California, where they will perform with a live band.