The late music professor Mary Rörich was my lecturer. When I registered for my part-time honours degree in the early Eighties, she had started a programme — an appreciation club for postgraduate students — and Wits University hadn’t made allowances for it. Mary so wanted it to happen that she would hold classes at her house.
A few times I would sleep over at her house because I didn’t have transport to go back to Soweto. Now we are commemorating her life with the first scholarship concert. I have been invited to do two pieces and so I am doing a beautiful lullaby called Evening Song — an Afrikaans lullaby that was translated into Zulu and arranged by Izak Roux for his gospel-jazz cantata called Coming Home.
There is a voice and piano arrangement for it that Malcolm Nay and I will do together. And I am also doing an excerpt from the Princess Magogo song cycle.
The Magogo songs have been enduring for me because I first heard them when I was a little girl. But I think that probably the most enduring vocal piece for me would be the Brahms Alto Rhapsody, simply because my mother sang it when she was a young singer [and the first female soloist] with the Ionian Male Choir, and I had the opportunity to record it a few years back.
When I am feeling meditative, I sing the melodies. But when I am relaxing I listen to jazz, whatever takes my fancy at any given time. Predictably, the greatest jazz recording, for me, is Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. I also enjoy some early Quincy Jones, an album called Gula Matari I remember from my childhood.
My literary needs are cyclical, depending on what I am going through. I love fiction, I love courtroom dramas — I’m not a great one for biographies. I read non-fiction from time to time; one does need the facts to know what is going on in the world.
At the moment I am reading Robert Sobukwe’s biography written by Benjamin Pogrund, titled Sobukwe and Apartheid. It is fascinating; it shows a side of the man that goes beyond the obvious. We were taught that Sobukwe was a revolutionary who was into killing people and who was responsible for deaths at some point in his life.
In fact, when you read the book and you study his attitude and approach to politics, you realise he was one of the most non-violent people one can think of. It is interesting that he died for a non-violent stance. It was that stance that helped propel us in a certain direction, and we have never really appreciated that.
But as far as novels go, I used to love Sidney Sheldon, God rest his soul. I love his female characters, his heroines. One of the first books of his I read was Rage of Angels. So I read fiction to get the heart racing. I’m a fairly fast reader, so I can do a 400page novel in a few days.
Recently I discovered the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy. I read the first two and I have the third one waiting for the holidays. For the holidays I am going back to KwaZulu-Natal, to my late parents’ place near the university. I do this nearly every year of my life. I connect with my people; I go to the family graveyard and I sit there and chat with them.
It is a very peaceful place to go to, one of the most comforting, peaceful and calm places I can ever hope to be. I sometimes get into my car and drive there overnight to spend time there, thinking, planning and plotting.
The other place I keep going back to, for meals at any rate, is Gramadoelas in Newtown. I’m a creature of habit. I found a gynaecologist and I stayed with her, I found a dentist and I stayed with him, and I found a doctor and I stayed with him for a long time.
I like things that are familiar. Because of the familiarity, one knows that the owners will sense when one does not want to be disturbed — they know their customers well. They greet you, they fall all over you when you get there and then they leave you alone.
If you want to be in your own space, you can find a little corner and just be on your own. You can be away for months but when you go back there it is almost as if you are walking into your home.
Sibongile Khumalo will be performing in the Mary Rörich Scholarship Concert that takes place at the Wits Theatre, Jorissen Street, Braamfontein, on October 30 at 3pm. Other performers include Jonathan Crossley, Helen Vosloo, Zanta Hofmeyr and Jill Richards. To book, phone: 011 717 1376.