Rocking Tshivenda: Muneyi, who was the winner of the 2024 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music, says that his next project will be wholly in his mother tongue.
For years, Muneyi’s music has felt like a quiet promise. If you were listening closely, you could hear it — in the tenderness of his lyrics, in the way he carried his Venda heritage without flinching, in the softness he refused to hide.
But now, after nearly a decade of slow-burning releases, performances, collaborations and prayerful patience, that promise has bloomed.
The 2024 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music went to Muneyi and, in many ways, it couldn’t have gone to anyone more deserving.
The award, which has recognised some of South Africa’s most daring creative voices, felt like a belated acknowledgement of what many fans already knew — Muneyi is one of the most spiritually grounded, emotionally intelligent and musically generous artists of his generation.
When Muneyi learned he had won, he was surrounded by friends at the Cape Town Art Fair but he couldn’t tell a soul.
“I got a message from someone at Standard Bank,” he recalls. “But I’ve done a lot of work with them before, so I didn’t think much of it.”
It wasn’t until he received a call from the National Arts Festival director that it clicked: “She told me I’d been selected as this year’s recipient. I was shocked.”
It’s a quiet kind of joy that’s become familiar in Muneyi’s journey, one defined less by sudden explosion and more by slow, intentional work.
Now 29, the singer-songwriter has been building toward this moment for nearly a decade.
“I’ve been actively making music since around 2017,” he says. “But I started writing in 2014. That was the first time I picked up a guitar — and I just couldn’t put it down.”
Born in the small village of Tshilapfene, outside Thohoyandou, and brought up by his grandmother, Muneyi’s music has always been rooted in storytelling.
The lyrics, often sung in his mother tongue Tshivenda, are deeply reflective, emotionally textured, and unflinchingly personal.
“When I started making music, I thought I’d make pop,” he laughs.
“I even wrote some English pop songs that I’ve never released. But when I was working on my first album, which was dedicated to my grandmother, I wanted it to be in a language she understands.
“That changed everything.”
His 2021 debut album Makhulu was a tribute to the woman who brought him up. Entirely in Tshivenda, it doesn’t just speak to one woman’s legacy. It’s a love letter to a language, a place and a way of being.
“I write in a specific dialect — an early 1930s version of Tshivenda — which is what my grandmother speaks,” he explains. “She never went to school, so as the language evolved, she wasn’t part of that change.
“I realised that if I didn’t preserve it, who would?”
The decision to sing in Tshivenda wasn’t always a good commercial one, but it was deliberate.
“There were moments of frustration,” he admits. “People would say, ‘We love what you do, but we don’t fully get it.’ So, I thought, ‘Let me give you some context. Let me write in English too, so you can understand me. Then we can go back to my language together.’”
This ethos plays out across his discography, which includes the deeply personal for the boys i like EP (2023) and this year’s project There’s a Burning Sensation Where My Heart Used To Be. Each release represents a new chapter in self-discovery and artistic evolution.
“for the boys i like was about exploring who I am. It was vulnerable, intimate. And There’s a Burning Sensation was about reflective self-forgiveness,” he says.
Musically, Muneyi resists neat categorisation. His sound blends different genres including contemporary folk, indie, singer-songwriter ballads and, increasingly, rock.
“The next project is going to be Tshivenda rock,” he shares, eyes lighting up. “Guitar-heavy, inspired by the rock and metal scenes, especially in Botswana.”
Part of what makes Muneyi so compelling is how grounded he is in community and collaboration. He’s a founding member of Litsomo (Sesotho for “folk tales”), with Leomile and Keke Lingo, a collective that emerged from a circle of friends inviting each other to gigs.
“At some point, we were like, ‘Yo, let’s actually do this thing properly,’” he says. “We realised that a lot of our songs were like folk tales. So, we picked a name that reflected that. And now we’re a real band.”
While they haven’t recorded yet, the group has already carved out a niche with live performances.
“We write together, perform together and only then do we record,” Muneyi explains. “By the time we get into the studio, the song has lived. It has energy. It has a response. That’s important to us.”
Winning the Standard Bank award comes at a pivotal time in Muneyi’s life. It’s a crowning moment that doesn’t feel like a beginning so much as a confirmation, a quiet nod from the universe that the long road is leading somewhere meaningful.
“It still feels surreal,” he says.
“But I’m grateful. Deeply.”
In some ways, Muneyi has always been ahead of his time, writing music in a language underrepresented in the mainstream, exploring themes of identity, love and loss, crafting stories that refuse to be flattened into genre or formula. It’s precisely this refusal to conform that has made his work so resonant, especially for those searching for something true.
He’s not chasing trends. He’s building something lasting.
When asked about the future, Muneyi is thoughtful.
“Going forward, all my albums will be in Tshivenda,” he says. “I just think it’s really important to sing in our home languages because I think it taps into a certain part of ourselves that you really can’t tap into with a language that is learned as a second or third.”
At 29, after years of being “on the cusp,” Muneyi is no longer emerging; he’s arrived. And the rest of us are lucky to be here for it.