Accomplished musician and celebrated dancer, Busi Mhlongo, best known for fusing mbaqanga, maskanda, marabi and traditional Zulu music, is back with a new album. Her debut, Babemu, and 1995’s Urbanzulu (produced by Will Mowat) have been responsible for some of South Africa’s more classic music moments captured on record.
Fame, however, has cost Mhlongo dearly and little over a year ago this Inanda-bred fighter decided to get her life back and away from the stranglehold of drug addiction. A year and mere weeks later, she stood before a crowd of thousands in Rome, celebrating her first anniversary of being clean and drug free. For the first time in years the applause, the music and the buzz were real and the moment was truly cherished.
Today the woman known as “Urbanzulu” by her fans, returns with a brand-new CD entitled Freedom, released on Hugh Masekela’s Chissa Records label. An album borne out of a time of great personal struggle and a mountain of emotional conflicts, Freedom is filled with 12 tracks of pure passion reflecting the reality of what she has actually endured.
Mhlongo’s music has always defied classification and, with only three solo albums to her name in a career that spans almost as many generations, her latest is without question her most ambitious.
You have been out of the public eye for quite a while — what have you been up to?
[Laughing] I’ve been doing things. I have just returned from Italy where I performed at the Eternal Festival, which goes on for 76 days. It started in June and ends in August. It was a fantastic experience and all organised by the South African embassy, which made it even more special.
This is only your third solo album in three decades — why so few?
I was just playing all the time. It was not done this way for any particular reason really, and only because I have always enjoyed the live experience so much. I did and have recorded with a great many people over the years, but my solo work always comes at times when I feel the need to express myself in my own space.
Your music was first released overseas, in the Netherlands, by people who knew little about you and what you were about, before your own country would commit. Does that upset you still?
I came back to South Africa from Holland in 1993 and recorded an album with Twasa [her band at the time]. I shopped it around the record companies in South Africa, but at that time it was very difficult for them to really accept African musicality. So I called a Dutch promoter who put a tour together for us, paid for our flights, everything, and we did a month-long tour of Europe and the United Kingdom and released the album there. I was really disappointed about home, but very happy that Holland really cared at a time when South Africa didn’t.
That’s changed for you and many others like you surely?
Oh, it has. In fact this [Freedom] is my first South African album. It’s truly South African in every context.
Thanks to Hugh Masekela… ?
Oh yes, he is an angel. He made sure that we all had fun making this record. I got to use my “other” voice. Most people know me as the shouting one, and things like that, because on both my previous albums I vented more than I sang by comparison to Freedom, which is very soft. There were times I didn’t recognise myself, because it sounded nothing like the Busi I knew.
Talking about not knowing yourself, many of the players and collaborators on Freedom are new to you too.
That’s right. Most of the songs were done by bra Hugh. Khaya Mahlangu also makes an appearance. I worked with the younger generation in the form of Oscar and Thandiswa Mazwai, which, for someone of my age, is great.
To see that I can work with the young ones and they in turn hear themselves through me, it’s such a blessing. The process was so natural.
When I worked with Oscar for example, we just went to the studio. I had no idea he had prepared two songs and when I arrived they just started playing and I added my parts right there — melody, lyrics, everything.
The little boy from Mafikizolo, Theo, also gave me some words — very simple, very spontaneous. The whole album unfolded in that way.
You included Nomeva on Freedom — a track made famous by Miriam Makeba. Why that particular song?
I really respect her for what she has done, especially for women. Not only South African women but for women all over the world. When you talk to women from Senegal or Uganda they always talk about how Miriam is an icon to them, especially the singers. This is my thank you to her.
What bought about the change from anger to mollification?
Bra Hugh talked to me. He pointed out that I was replicating the earlier records and the tension on each. When I started to shout, Hugh would stop and redirect me. So I looked for another voice, which I found, and I now believe that there are many more voices within me that are still to come out.
Give an example of one.
I am talking more and more about doing a rock record, but sung in Zulu. It’s merely an idea at this stage and I have no idea whether the band would be local or international. All I know is that there is a hard, rock voice screaming to be let out.
Having survived a debilitating drug habit, the future looks bright and positive?
Yebo. This album is my way of saying thank you to all the people who helped me through it all. While I was in Italy recently I celebrated my first anniversary clean. It was good to hear the applause and the ovations from a place where the buzz was purely natural; not chemical.
Mhlongo will always challenge the naysayers. She’s made a career out of it, gaining love and respect from her audience for her individuality and will to change convention whenever the opportunity arises. Her latest album and jazz flirtation is sweet testament to that.
Freedom, released by Chissa Records and Sony Music is out now on CD.
The details
Catch Busi Mhlongo at the Women’s Arts Festival 2003 when she performs alongside other major names such as Judith Sephuma and Bongo Maffin’s Thandiswa Mazwai. Other performances taking place at venues around the Newtown Cultural Precinct include choreography by Jeannette Ginslov and a look at child rape in a work directed by Lara Foot. The festival takes place from August 8 to 10. For details: Tel: (011) 832 1641