Sakumzi Qumana. (Facebook)
Sakumzi Qumana has been going through some changes.
Ever since the dissolution of Johnny Cradle, the solo act turned trio what was put on indefinite pause towards the end of 2018, Qumana has been navigating independence and putting out solid music projects, while also being present in the life of his daughter, who also has a big heart for music and art just like her daddy.
With his latest set of songs, he’s pushing his musician muscle harder by collaborating with the acclaimed composer and trumpeter, Lwanda Gogwana, who is well-known in South Africa’s jazz circle. Qumana is exploring new ways to compose, and to seriously consider what else the songs can become.
“I always tell people that I don’t rehearse because I keep writing [new] songs. At least it’s something,” he says amid laughter during rehearsal, some two days leading up to their Sunday show.
Gogwana had accidentally bumped some keys on the Moog, and Qumana had “juggled the keys that melt the skin up off your face” on his keyboard. A piece of music was being created right there, free-style. He sang some of the lyrics to Elokshin, from his Everything Here Is True album, which he completed in 2020 under his new alias, Q.
Qumana explains the moment he knew that a sonic shift was brewing in a self-directed documentary, released alongside his live music project, Everything Here Is True Remotely (Live), recorded and filmed at a remote location during 2021, during a time when we weren’t allowed to gather.
Everything Here is True
“One day, I was walking, coming from some business meeting, and I was listening to AKA’s Beyonce. The beat [was] just looping in my head,” he says. He then started freestyling some lyrics. “I knew, in that moment, that things have changed. My voice was different.”
His and Gogwana’s paths also initially crossed during a business meeting.
“The first thing I said to him was: ‘Huge fan!’ That’s all I said,” says Gogwana. “I’d listened to him so many times and watched his gigs. Always been a huge fan. This was [in] 2019,”
Says Q to Gogwana: “I didn’t know you, but then I’d heard your name because of the work and stuff.”
They carry on rehearsing songs from the catalogue. There’s some Johnny Cradle gems, brand new and good for you songs from the Everything Here project and some fresh, unreleased selections.
Mahambelala is one of them gems. Written close to a decade ago, it’s a story about being a rolling stone and searching for a home to call one’s own; a place to belong to, in a sense. “If you’re from the township, you belong there, so you’re right at home. But you end up in places, on a day-to-day, with people that you don’t necessarily belong with,” he’d told me back then.
Where the original had a guitar-based groove, the re-worked version leans towards jazz, doubtless a direct result of Gowana’s contributions. There’s even a muted trumpet solo at the end to even out the odds.
The theme of belonging threads through other earlier songs. uLate, released with an accompanying video in 2014, is about his origins: Eastern Cape-born and raised, Cape Town-hardened and Jozi-minded. It was, on its release, another iteration in the life of the musician’s career.
Johnny Cradle – uLate
”The way I make songs, it’ll be one day. If I’ve got it that day, the song will be from start to finish. I may come out at 6pm,” he says.
uLate was the last song of a creative bubble in Cape Town during December 2013.
“We were listening to this song, [and] my friend Suede was, like, ‘This is it!’”
uLate also inadvertently solidified the Johnny Cradle concept. “I know there’s hip-hop there; I know there’s some musicality, with strings and all these different elements — probably comes from my background with my dad and his wide collection of jazz. I know it’s all of this but [at its core] it’s heavy bass and hip-hop drums,” he said in an episode of the SABC1 docuseries, Brothers and Sisters with Soul, back in 2017.
“I still listen to ’90s rap from the West Coast, this is just what I do. It’s major, heavy Dr Dre hip-hop drums; this is just what I know. A drum loop is not a drum loop if the kick doesn’t hit. It needs to be hard. I want that hip-hop drum that resonates with me. I want that deep bass, which is probably me listening to reggae. And electronic elements around it. While that’s not a genre, that’s a feeling I can identify with. And then the Xhosa chant.”
Groundation
“This music thing happens how it happens. I don’t particularly know the date of when it started, but I just know that I saw a Sade documentary about Lover’s Rock playing, and I knew that, ‘Okay, I have to buy an acoustic guitar and make music.’ And that was that.”
The name Johnny Cradle came about because he needed a moniker for a gig he was booked to perform in Gqeberha during the early 2000s. He went on to collaborate with other people during that decade; cats like DJ Laz and his vocalist friend Lebadi, who has since died. It’s dramatic shifts like encountering the loss of loved ones, and moving his entire life between cities, which contribute to the inner turmoil that ultimately results in sonic shifts.
DJ Laz said in an earlier interview: “uSakumzi is the most resilient person I’ve ever met in terms of music. When I met him, his sound was so different to what it is now. And his earlier stuff was so different to what he was doing then.”
Besides loss, there’s the ever-present need to speak about the living conditions of black people — in Azania and throughout the entire black world. A well-travelled denizen as well as a follower of the Pan Africanist principles instilled in him by his late father — a Pan Africanist Congress stalwart who used to take him and his siblings on cross-country drives while working as a truck driver — he’s never been far removed from how we share similar struggles, irrespective of where life places us on Earth.
The earlier-mentioned Elokshin, placed last on Everything Else, speaks about the challenges faced by young, black men whose dreams get throttled until they decompose in the ghetto. The lyrics include hard-hitting, truth-speaking bars such as “Abantu balambile, and ithemba liphelile/… /sihleli sivalelana elokshin, iyooo hayibo/ kudala sisokola, kudala sifola/ and there’s no money fuckall, so fuck off/ and maybe that’s why bayithatha ngenkane”.
It can also be interpreted as a song about survivor’s guilt. At some point in his life, Q found himself unable to carry on with his studies because he did not have enough money. Instead of being sad and depressed, he went to hustle in Cape Town, where he met the DJ Laz he’d re-link with a decade later to form the Johnny Cradle trio alongside drummer Tabogo Mosane. That journey resulted in the self-titled LP that Just Music released in 2017. They gigged relentlessly to support it. The two-year stretch of weekly shows resulted in severe burnout at the end of 2018.
He said then that he was sick and tired of the skip-the-rope game promoters of live music like playing. “I’m not doing that. I’m not sucking up to promoters to get these shows, and then get some fucked up time slot. ‘Pay your dues’, I’ve paid my dues, fuck that,” he protested.
“If I’m not gonna feel good about these big shows, then let me play the shows that I wanna play, ke. I’ve got a comfortable couch at home, I don’t care about all this other stuff. It’s too much energy [spent] around things that have nothing to do with you, that you can’t control, and I’d rather … I’d feel great if I could just play townships around South Africa.”
Everything Here Is …
“Everything Here Is True was basically [me] acknowledging my wackness — playing around with love and playing around with people’s hearts, and then complaining like, ‘Oh shit, nobody loves me!’ These ones, it’s more like, ‘Okay cool, I’ve dealt with that, I said my sorrys to people I need to say sorry to.’ One of the songs acknowledges that, you know.”
At this point, he turns to his keyboard to play the tune, and then sings the lines, “Who made the rules of the dating game?/ ‘cause when I play I never win,” from Never Settle Down, an unreleased joint.
“Knowing all of that, now I can approach my life with a more here perspective, where I’m, like, ‘I know who I am, I know what I do, I know my flaws and all this.’ I’m actually free. Now I’m having fun with it. Even with life, ine groove.”
Is this groove-focused approach the result of Gogwana’s input?
“Because now I feel free, I was able to then be like, ‘Yo man, let’s do this shit.’ He opened up my playing songs like this, where it’s more free, more fun, just having a good time.”
Their interactions are fluid, and the rehearsal is a breeze. Q asks Gogwana questions like ‘What key is this?’, to which the latter responds with something along the lines of ‘F minor’. They speak about melodies,and grooves and colours.
“I’m a jazz musician, and we’re taught to be spontaneous, to react to the moment,” says Gogwana. “He’s actually a jazz musician at heart. We’ve had many conversations about his upbringing, and what he listened to when he was young. That’s [why] it was easier to flow, because he already has it.