SA opera’s favourite ‘granny’ is no prima donna act
Songbird Sibongile Khumalo tells that her stellar career has given her a chance to celebrate women
THERE’S a refreshing sense of the ordinary in Sibongile Khumalo that takes you completely by surprise.
Dressed in a broderie anglaise top with a red cardigan, the mezzo soprano is the epitome of grandmotherliness, and you struggle to think of her as one of South Africa’s most recognised operatic performers.
“A veteran? Me?” she laughs. “If I’m so iconic, I can’t do something like slip on a banana peel or have an off day.” But she doesn’t disparage the huge impact that she has had on her audiences.
“I do not allow myself to have the word ‘difficulties’ in my vocabulary. I also avoid the word ‘regret’. It’s a worthless, useless emotion. Like fear.”
Music wasn’t an obvious career choice. “My father, Kgabi Mngoma, a professor of music, taught us. I was a terrible piano player; the violin was my instrument. Every weekend we were at music, art, dance, drama . . .
“Not that I took it for granted, but it wasn’t something I considered as a career. As a child, my choice of career was medicine. This was common. Every township child at that time wanted to be a doctor, or a lawyer or a socialworker . . . and then maybe a teacher or a nurse: that kind of hierarchy.
“When the crunch came in my matric year in 1975, I began to ask why music was not being taught in our schools. And I realised it was because of a dearth of teachers. I decided to become a music teacher,” she says.
But the more she studied, the more her dreams changed. She was an arts administrator. Then a lecturer. And finally a performer.
She worked at the Soweto-based Federated Union of Black Artists (Fuba) and Funda in Newtown. “I realised all I wanted to do, really, was to sing. But I wanted to work out if I could pay my bills at the same time. When I eventually took the plunge, I was 26.”
She left Fuba “and went home and waited for the phone to ring”, she says.
“It did. The most exciting call was in 1993, when I won the Standard Bank young artist award for music [linked to the National Arts Festival]. It changed my life. For a long time, I used to talk about Sibongile BG and Sibongile AG: Grahamstown was very important for me. Grahamstown and all its colonialism forced me to say: ‘Do I really want to be a part of that?’
“But then I looked at the people acknowledged by this institution, and I said yes!
“My repertoire at that first Grahamstown festival was like something I had done at Kippies in 1992 — it was the show that had made critics take notice. It was a bit of classical, jazz and traditional music. When I sang the aria from Handel’s Messiah called Who May Abide the Day of His Coming? in a jazzified way, the audience erupted. And I was like: ‘What have I done?’
“I believe that for many musicians, the traditional roots are the bedrock of our creativity. When I was a child, there was an indigenous church whose property neighboured ours. We heard their music every day. When I had a chance to express myself, I dipped into that.”
Music is in the family. “My grandfather was a maskandi musician,” Khumalo says. “My father was a music academic. My brother is a cellist. My elder son is a violinist. My daughter sings. My other son has taken the scenic path through other careers and is currently a DJ.”
This week she is performing in uShaka kaSenzangakhona, composed by Mzilikazi Khumalo (no relation), alongside singers Thembisile Twala, Kananelo Sehauand Emmanuel Maqoma, performance poet Mhlonishwa Dlamini and the Gauteng Choristers accompanied by a 68-member orchestra conducted by Sidwell Mhlongo.
“uShaka is an epic oratorio,” she says. “It has an interesting history. It has gone through a few incarnations. I sang it when I was a student in Zululand. Then Christopher James and Robert Maxym reworked it into a version which gave it life.
“It’s not quite an opera. It’s not an oratorio either. It calls for a crossover style. It’s like the speak-sing Wagner practised, but it’s based on Zulu folk tradition. The challenge is to be true to it. The essence of the music is to make beautiful sounds. And to help the music speak.
“Opera’s fantastic,” she adds. “As a performer, you have to try to make it make sense for your audience, even if they do not understand the language you’re singing in. You need to make them cry because of the emotions you sweep them away with.”
She might pooh-pooh the notion of being a veteran out of humility, but she’s certain- ly risen to the critical status of musical giant.
“I have been very privileged to have been asked to do certain things. I’ve had things composed for me. I was the first performer of the opera Princess Magogo. I’ve been humbled to work with people like [composer] Philip Miller; it feels good.
“However, what really has defined my career? That’s easy. I’ve been involved with projects that celebrate women — Dolly Rathebe, Miriam Makeba, Busi Mhlongo — when organisers consider me an appropriate voice to celebrate other women, it is particularly special.”
Moreover, she will slip on that banana peel — should the need arise.
“People laugh with you when they know you’re human, after all.”
uShaka kaSenzangakhona is at the Joburg Theatre in Braamfontein on March 21 and 22
I believe that for many musicians, the traditional roots are the bedrock of our creativity