Thandiswa Mazwai in tune at 40
Where would I go to hide? Where would I go to cry? Who would I call for advice?
So I called on Letta Mbulu’s to express my sadness about this moment and the trauma that has come, especially through the student movement and the trauma of the female voices.
I sampled this girl that I saw in the news and she was being manhandled. The cops where throwing her into a van and she was saying … actually somebody else behind her was screaming for her to run. And she said ‘From whom must I run? From whom must I run?’ And I knew we had to have this girl in this thing. Jikijela Malaika Jikijela is Busi Mhlongo’s Wakrazulwa. There’s a video of Mazwai performing it at the City Hall in Cape Town maybe two or so years back.
It’s shot on a cellphone. A blur of yellow and blue. You see Herbie Tsaoeli on the bass in the back, then hand unsteady, pans. Mazwai is just left of centre. Wailing. Her hands in prayer down by her midriff. Her hands clutching at her chest. Her hands over her face, covering her eyes.
“It’s a very hard thing for me to perform. Every time I perform that song I almost break down. Actually, I think I literally do break down when I perform that song. I just have such a profound love for Busi Mhlongo as my musical master, there’s something so beautiful in having a master. It’s like in the martial arts. There’s something so transient about it. So completely moving. Having a master and you can sit at their feet and just learn, you know.
“To sit at the feet of your master is a completely ridiculous experience and then to sing her song was very difficult for me to do. I always crumble. I always crumble when I have to do that and in the end I think’ that’s the beauty of the song. ’Cause maybe you can feel the vulnerability. You can feel that it’s on the edge. I’m glad I did it. I’ve done a lot of tribute songs to Busi Mhlongo that I’ve never released. I did a song with the Blk Jks.”
She breaks. That edge she just mentioned. We are on it now. Eyes red. Glistening.
“Which is funny because it starts off with the words ‘Your dying was a total annihilation of my soul’. So I can never listen to that song. I’ve done a lot of those but I’m happy I finally got to do this one and just do my final cry. The final gut-wrenching cry.”
The final cry? “I doubt it. I doubt it. I don’t think so. I think I’ll always cry about her because … I think it’s because she’s the only person I know who I felt, I really felt she didn’t want to die. She was resistant till the very end. Just fighting it. I remember the last conversation I had with her. It was just such a sick conversation. It was a crazy conversation talking about … it’s crazy. Really too crazy. I mean, what conversation do you have with a dying woman? The last conversation we had was a week before she died. I mean, she was literally at the door. I don’t think I will ever stop crying.”
Integrity “That word is the first word my father taught me as a kid. And I’m so glad because it meant so much to me. My first big word and it’s integrity. And my father always said: ‘You must do everything with integrity.’ And maybe that’s why it is good that it was introduced to me at such a young age, so that I can fully grasp the intensity of the word.”