Zoë Modiga and the politics of love

In November last year, critically acclaimed novelist Toni Morrison sat down with fellow writer Pam Houston to discuss Morrison’s eighth novel titled Love for Oprah Magazine. 

When asked why she had chosen that name, Morrison responded by saying, “[Love] is easily the emptiest cliché, the most useless word, and at the same time the most powerful human emotion — because hatred is involved in it, too.

“I thought if I removed the word from nearly every other place in the manuscript, it could become an earned word. If I could give the word, in my very modest way, its girth and its meaning and its terrible price and its clarity at the moment when that is all there is time for, then the title does work for me.”

Four years beforehand, in 1999, feminist icon and scholar bell hooks wrote a book titled all about love which was her meditation on the long-existing gap in the literature on love. In this book, hooks conceived of a definition for love, in the midst of an increasingly loveless society, this, we are told, is a book that teaches us  “how to return to love”.

When Zoë Modiga and I formally start our interview over Zoom after a giggle-filled catch-up, I ask about her musical oeuvre so far and how she feels it relates to the politics of love. 

Specifically, I ask her about bell hooks’ first chapter in all about love, titled Clarity: Give Love The Words, and how her work on her albums Yellow: The Novel, Inganekwane and Nomthandazo has seemingly given love new lyricism and melody.

“Oh man,” starts Modiga, “I really love the idea of my discography being read that way. 

“I always say that words aren’t everything, which is quite ironic for a singer-songwriter, but I also think that, as much as there aren’t words for everything, there are some words to describe how we can love on life. 

“Life can be both magical and deeply challenging.”

Thoughtfully, Modiga continues, “For me, it has created a lot of ease to share a love into that space through my music, whether it was about internal feelings, whether it was about black people, spiritual spaces — I think my discography has been about figuring out and seeking a loving for all these things and spaces.”

As we continue to talk about love and its attendant politics, Modiga explains how it can be a path to liberation. Like Morrison, Modiga understands that because of its power, love can situate us in new, just political possibilities.

In creating three projects that explore different iterations of love, Modiga was not only filling out the girth of the word but giving us sonic riffs that might  re-acquaint us with “how to return to love”, as bell hooks suggested.

Take for instance Yellow: The Novel, her 2017 debut album, a 23-song, multi-genre explosion onto the South African music scene as a solo artist. On the second track, Abounding Within, Modiga’s mellifluous vocals float atop the bass rhythms. She starts: “I know that there’s a place/ Inside of all of us/ A place that’s made of love/ Where peace and truth abound/ It’s lying there away in its dormant state / Waiting for our souls it sits and sighs aloud …”

In her second studio album, Inganekwane (2020), Modiga thinks through the nodes of love in community. Songs such as Inganekwane, Umdali and Abantu call for introspection, for communal practices of love and healing and a belief that a spiritual realm beyond our understanding has called for communities of black and dispossessed people over the world to continue to fight for their humanity with an undeterred resilience. 

In Isegazini, Modiga’s sweet tone affirms that this spiritual inheritance is codified in our DNA.

On her third album, which was released in April, Nomthandazo, she calls for prayer as a tool with which to exercise the practice of love. 

For Modiga, if we are to take the praxis of love seriously, we need to look back to move forward.

“I find myself in looking back — in looking back I find myself,” she explains gently. 

Nomthandazo, which loosely translates as “mother of prayer”, is her aural and imaginative reclamation of a grandmother she did not meet but carries forward in her prayers and in her life. 

“My mother always tells me that I remind her of her mother,” the musician continues as she shows how the memory of lineage unfolds anew in her own life.

Soon after, we talk about the school bell that sits in Modiga’s apartment. She indirectly inherited it from her grandmother, who used it when she was a teacher. 

“The idea of having something so much older than me in my possession is insane to me,” she laughs in another interview. 

As we speak about it, Abdullah Ibrahim and Johnny Dyani’s song Ntsikana’s Bell becomes the soundtrack of our conversation.

Beyond the memory of her grandmother, Modiga is the kind of artist who exudes a comfortable, self-possessed elegance and this shows when she is likened to famous figures such as Miriam Makeba, Busi Mhlongo and Nina Simone.

There is a seriousness in her choice of aesthetics and self-styling that does not denote a self-obsession but rather an invitation to all the poetic landscapes that she creates through her music. Her message to love each other is not shallow but, to rephrase Modiga herself, unbending.

In many ways this quality is why she was so enthralled by the late Hugh Masekela. Modiga will be one of the acts performing at the festival in his honour this year. HughFest will be on at Nirox Sculpture Park in Krugersdorp on Sunday 1 December.

Presented by Assupol and hosted by the Hugh Masekela Heritage Foundation, the PR missive states that “the late Bra Hugh Masekela’s eclecticism and famous ‘Love, Learn, Teach’ motto is yet again reflected in the festival he founded”.

Modiga recounts how she first performed in a similar stage curated by Masekela. 

“I remember being so elated to be part of that and, for me, I was, like, ‘There are so many people that this man has mentored and given platforms, why me?’” she relates, almost incredulously. 

“It was 2018, and Yellow: The Novel was about a year old at this time, and I didn’t understand what he genuinely saw in me. I remember doing that show in Soweto and seeing my name on banners for the first time.

“I remember, I felt like an icon. He was the reason why my name was on that kind of thing for the first time.”

For Modiga this was a material practice in love from Masekela, a way to hold space for newer generations while appreciating the work of those who came before.

Talking about her performance at the HughFest, Modiga says she intends to pay homage to that generosity of spirit. It will be fuelled by the love of a beloved South African ancestor who shifted the terrain of our country’s music globally and, in many ways, helped introduce it to new audiences.

As we bring the conversation to a close, we think deeply about this philosophical invitation to go forward by looking back. 

Perhaps in thinking through the genealogies of shared cultural histories, we can give life to the isiZulu expression unyawo alunampumulo, meaning a person is a person wherever they may come from.

A call for love is not cliché nor is it predictable and Modiga’s discography reflects that. Rather, it is a  means by which we can stitch together new, just worlds, no matter where we come from.

• Modiga will be performing on 

29 November at The Chairman 

in Durban.

• HughFest will be on at Nirox Sculpture Park in Krugersdorp on 1 December, featuring performances by Modiga, TKZee, The Mahotella Queens, Tete Mbambisa, Dato Seiko with John Selolwane, and Khaya Mahlangu with Nhlanhla Mahlangu plus, on decks, Sumthin Brown B2B with DJ Bob.