SA baritone Musa’s new memoir
Bass baritone Musa Ngqungwana might be an opera sensation, but a tough upbringing is behind his success – and now he’s put in all in a memoir
GIVE him a fake sword, a cape and a historic wig and he’ll rock it. Put him in a tux, cover him in tattoos or rugged old clothing and he’ll give it his all. Eastern Cape- born bass baritone Musa Ngqungwana’s voice is so versatile and his style so flexible he can pull off any role that comes his way.
And the opera singer, now based in Philadelphia in the US, is wowing international audiences in challenging theatre productions, singing effortlessly in Italian, French, German, English – and even a smattering of Russian.
Even so, he says, some of his family members back home still don’t understand what he does for a living.
Musa, who was raised in Port Elizabeth and studied opera in Cape Town, was supposed to become a doctor or an engineer. Instead he’s singing for his supper, he tells us when we meet him in the Mother City.
Musa is back in his homeland for the launch of his book, Odyssey of an African Opera Singer. Dressed casually in jeans and a denim shirt with a straight-back cap, he looks nothing like the often regal figure he cuts on stage.
The book started off as a form of therapy for him, he says. “It came out of anger. I realised there were things I needed to iron out and get out of my system. And I’ve always found that writing is that avenue, a therapeutic process for me instead of punching someone, which I used to do when I was younger.”
It was when he first got interested in the choir and girls in high school that he stopped using his fists to get his point across and started using his words.
After he’d finished studying and started blazing a trail in the global opera world, he found many people in Europe and America were interested in knowing more about him, Musa (34) says.
“They wanted to know where I came from – wh a t tribe
MI came from, what my name meant and I realised there was a biography in there somewhere.” If there were enough people interested in his story he’d tell it, he reasoned. And what a story it is. USA, who was raised by his mother, Nontlantla, and late grandmother, Misiwe, addresses a number of personal issues in his book. From growing up in a family of revolutionary ANC members to living without a dad and getting his first lucky break in singing, it’s all there. One of the most personal issues he had to deal with, he says, was his father not showing up when it was time for Musa to go to initiation school. “It’s one of those things I wrote before it made it into the book. I was venting, cursing, mad that he wasn’t ever there for me. And the fact I could count o n my fingers the number of times I’d actually seen him in my life,” he says.
“I don’t care how infrequently your father appears in your life, the circumcision part is where he’s instrumental. And when he was a no-show, that crushed me.”
It was this sense of disappointment and anger that led to him almost flunking out of matric, he says, and he barely passed.
Because of this, he took a bridging course in quantity surveying instead of medicine as he’d hoped but ran out of money and had to make a plan.
By this time he already had singing experience. He first joined a school choir in Zwide township near Port Elizabeth when he was 16 after he saw a video of a Mozart opera, The Magic Flute, which featured a black man in the role of speaker of the temple.
“I didn’t know black people could do that,” he recalls. “Yes, we all sang in the choirs, but to sing opera in costumes? When I saw that it changed my life.”
Musa still had dreams of studying medicine once he was done with quantity surveying. Things changed in 2004 when he discovered his voice, he explains.
A friend, Nonkie Momo, was going through similar problems and had dropped out of university in PE.
“Because we both sang in the choirs we decided to form an opera ensemble. We’d seen a group from Pretoria, The Black Tie Ensemble, which came from the State Theatre and was started by [opera legend] Mimi Coertse and the late Neels Hansen,” he says.
They then sought the help of Monica Oosthuizen, an opera lover and supporter who used to bring people to perform in a PE retirement home.
“We called her but [the audition] didn’t go well. When we finally got through the fourth time she called us into her home and when we sang for her she organised a concert for us. That’s what
changed my life.”
Through Monica’s connections he later auditioned for Mimi, which led to him being referred to the University of Cape Town, where he completed his bachelor of music honours degree in performance (first class). He left South Africa in 2012.
LIVING out of a suitcase and travelling the world has its ups and downs, Musa shares. One of the downsides is never really having long-term relationships. “I get dumped all the time because I’m just never in one place for long. I’m not in South Africa, which is home, nor am I in Philadelphia, where I’m based.”
Finding a girlfriend who can deal with his busy life would be a miracle, Musa says, flashing his dimples.
“It would have to be someone who’s crazy and independent enough to understand.”
Giving an example of his crazy schedule, he says he often rehearses for nine hours “on a good day” – longer if it’s the week before a production.
“And your day off is just for laundry and groceries,” he says
But he loves it. He gets to be different characters from month to month and explore different cultures at the same time.
His roles in the past year include playing Leporello in the Mozart opera Don Giovanni, Queequeg in Moby Dick – a personal favourite where he sported tattoos – and his latest as Porgy in Porgy and Bess, an English opera by George Gershwin which he performed in Salt Lake City, Utah, before coming to SA to launch his book.
And how did his family – who’d pinned their hopes on him becoming a doctor – react when he chose opera instead?
“They hated it. They loathed it. I want an even stronger word . . . maybe detested it,” he says, laughing.
But now they’re okay with it because they can see how happy he is.
“Some still don’t really understand what I do exactly though. They just see the pictures of costumes and my travelling. But they don’t hate it, which is high praise!”
Grace, resilience, music and the help of many earthly angels who extended a hand brought him out of poverty and he’ll forever be grateful, Musa says.
“Music changed my life.”