Without shoes and without inhibitions, the pint-sized Simphiwe Dana completed the chores her grandparents had set out for her — walking to the river to collect water, going into the forest to gather wood. Always barefoot and always with a song on her four-year-old lips. The hymns she sang, of tradition, of weddings and circumcisions, instilled in the young Dana a love for song that would carry her from the hills of Butterworth in the Eastern Cape to the stage of this year’s Cape Town International Jazz Festival.
Further up and to the west of the continent, during the early 1980s, another African singer was shuffling her way to a life of song. And she was doing it barefoot too. Only she was some 40 years older and had been trying to make a living out of singing since she was 16.
Cesaria Evora had been singing for her supper as a teenager in the bars and clubs of her birthplace, Mindelo, on the Cape Verde island of Sao Vicente. She had wanted to make it a life-long career, but it just didn’t seem viable in her home on the Senegalese islands. That is, until she travelled to Portugal in 1985 to record on an album with fellow female Cape Verdean singers. This subsequently led to some more recording sessions, in Paris, and a stint of albums that would, at long last, take her music around the world.
Evora never did take to putting shoes on, even on the many stages her acclaim led her too, earning her the endearing nickname, The Barefoot Diva. “Being barefoot is more natural to me,” she told an American writer. “To many it may seem odd because they always wear shoes, but in my country, I am always barefoot.” It is said she does this in symbolic solidarity with the poor and destitute of her West African country. She lived a life of poverty herself, growing up without a father and living off her mother’s meagre cook’s wages. It was at an orphanage choir that Evora found refuge in a love for song.
Dana, on the other hand, put on some shoes, grew up and moved on to the big city of Johannesburg to pursue her dream of being a singer. “Coming to Jo’burg, I found such a different mindset,” she says. “Everybody is free. I feel like I fit in. I fit in so well.” It was not long before Dana’s performances around the city attracted the attention of the local music community — and a major label. She released her debut album, Zandisile, through Gallo Records in July last year. Dana launched her music on the Johannesburg Music Hall stage, alongside another well-known African singer, Angelique Kidjo.
It was a nerve-wracking experience. More so, she says, because she was putting her music out there for the first time, rather than performing with the world music star. But Dana held her own. “That day, I was proud. Proud of my country and proud of my roots. We, as South African artists, and as African artists, need to respect our own abilities,” she says. “We need to stop this mentality of thinking we are lesser than the international artists that come here. We always seem to be used as opening acts and it points to an inferiority complex.” Dana is determined to exude the confidence needed to make it in her own right.
As it will be when she appears on the same bill as Evora this weekend. “She is a big name and has the respect of a lot of young people.” Dana is excited to see her perform live, but even more so at the possibility that Evora may get to hear the songs off Zandisile. “I believe in the strength of my own music. Cesaria seeing me perform live is enough in itself.”
The self-assured attitude of this young artist is cultivated through her music, and more specifically through her mother tongue of Xhosa, in which she chooses to sing. “It is so important right now,” she says about this decision. “Our [indigenous] languages have been sidelined. I grew up speaking pure Xhosa and, then, was taken into an environment where we were taught it was wrong; that it was heathen, demonic to speak the language we were born speaking. I grew up in the Transkei and the teachers drummed it into us that we had to learn English to succeed. It directly affected my self-esteem.
“I recorded the album in Xhosa, not to show off the fact that I could, I did it for me to feel complete.”
Dana believes respecting this is part of reclaiming our African identity. “African music, just like Spanish or Mexican music, or anything else, has its own identity. Why would we want to deny that?”
It is the same for Evora. She has been singing a variation of the blues known as morna, since she started. Not many people outside of Cape Verde can speak her language, but that has not stopped them appreciating her music. On her website forum, you’ll find many comments like this one: “I don’t understand the words of her songs, yet listening to them stirs me emotionally, illustrating the power of her songs and beautiful voice.”
Evora feels it is part of the universality of music. “There are no frontiers with music. If the music is good, if you like the voice and the melody, and if the musicians are good, then you don’t have to understand. Music works wonders like that,” she told the Independent Weekly.
Dana too has attracted fans that do not understand her language. You’ll find comments like this, on the Musica website, from people who have purchased the album: “I am a Pedi who have [sic] since developed an interest in Xhosa after listening to the album … Now I know a bit of Xhosa and I never knew it could be so romantic.”
Singing in her native tongue ensured Evora’s popularity the world over — and it may just do the same for the South African Music Award-nominated Dana.