It is hard to imagine a person in a greater state of elation than an artist who has just released an album. This is probably because, as this month’s hottest pop exponent, Thandiswa Mazwai puts it, it is a “labour of love”.
“I have gone for eight months without making any income but this has been worth it,” she says.
Mazwai has avoided destitution by belonging to the famous outfit Bongo Maffin, who keep a steady diary of performances, and by having a “record company that looks after me”.
She cannot hide her ecstasy. She’s taken to begging anyone who cares to have a look at her gigantic image on a five-story banner plastered on the wall of Gallo records in Rosebank, not far from where we have met.
Everyone must see her image on the wall and listen to the album — from her uncle, jazz musician Fitzroy Ngcukana, to a motorist who seemed unsure who she was.
The album title Zabalaza (Struggle), is identical to an earlier project of stablemate Brother of Peace. She discovered the coincidence on the eve of its release last Friday.
The album distinguishes Mazwai from her peers. She follows a number of female kwaito vocalists who have left established acts to pursue solo careers — names like Lebo Mathosa and Thembi Seete of Boom Shaka and, I cringe with embarrassment to say this, Queen Sesoko of Arthur Mafokate’s Aba Shante.
Mathosa enjoyed reasonable success with her solo debut Dream, especially with her hit Tsodiyo. But her career has inexplicably stalled and these days she gets by on function appearances. Seete has had to compensate for her limitations by busting her gut to become a hip-hop collaborator and actress.
Mazwai explored her Afro-pop pedigree for Zabalaza and in the process has changed the context within which her work will be judged.
She explores her Xhosa genealogy, using predominantly Xhosa traditional singing. She has fused it with contemporary elements of jazz and even a hint of reggae. There is only a vague trace of kwaito on one track (Kwanele).
Now, instead of associating Mazwai with Mathosa and others, one will be moved to think of her in the company of divas like Judith Sephuma, Linda Kekana and, maybe with time, Gloria Bosman.
Yet there is a synergy with what she did in Bongo Maffin. An early track (Nizalwa Ngobani) has subtle reminders of her Shona chant in Bongo Maffin’s Laduma’izulu.
She was largely fascinated by “the presence of a spirit” when Mabe Thobejane, percussionist for Phillip Tabane’s Malombo, brought a full range of his armour into the studio.
There would have been a spirit, too, when Tshepo Tshola contributed his distinctly hoarse vocals to sing in Sotho and Xhosa in Ndilinde, the album’s most outstanding effort.
At one point, she shoots off on a tangent into a gospel number originally by US bluesman Reuben Ford called Revelation. It is included for a poignant reason. When she was a youngster the Mazwai family spent a year with her uncle, Ngcukana, when her father, veteran journalist Thami Mazwai, had gone to study abroad.
The experience brought with it a music-filled homestead, and there she heard Ford’s instrumental, later made popular by Yellow Jackets and Take 6. On the album her version serves as a tribute to her late mother.
Of the experiments she has tried on this album, I ask her which one she finds the boldest. “The entire album was an experiment,” she says.
“I could have just laid on some house beats and started singing, because I can sing,” she says. But instead she went ahead and produced an intellectual, relevant album that speaks to her peers and Africans at large. Mazwai’s peers, of course, are kids of the kwaito generation. “Kwaito,” she reckons, “has been the movement of our time.”
The album also renews Mazwai’s acquaintance with the press, especially the Sunday gossip press.
“We are at a point in our history where we can build,” she says. “Anyone who has an audience has a responsibility to create something positive, that inspires and is imaginative.”
Weekend papers, she says, have failed in this duty. Yet she recently spoke to one at length —the same paper that defied her and named Bongo Maffin bandmate Stoan Seate as the father of her child against her wishes.
On being prompted about this contradiction, she shrugs: “I will not say (in the press) what I would say to my friend.” It was probably on the advice of her publicists.