Sebina talks experimentation, making hits
She will inspire you to hum along in the song Loves light. You will fall in love with her poignant vocals and rich Setswana language lyrics in the song Dikeledi. Then she quickly makes a shift transformation to traditional folk music and Electronic Dance Music in the song Troubled, featuring Solly Sebotso. She then goes all out in the Amapiano genre as she owns the vocals in Major League’s Dinaledi and Abidoza’s Motho ke motho. Mpho Sebina is probably the most capricious artist right now in Botswana.
Her neo-soul vocals have often elicited comparisons to some of the biggest names in the field such as Erykah Badu.
For a singer-songwriter who has taken the music industry by storm this year, Sebina told Arts & Culture in an interview this week that she has been going through a very experimental phase in her career.
“Releasing music is always a risk; you never know how the market will receive it. The pandemic made me realise that life is short and it taught me not to overthink music too much. I put out music that was good to me and when I felt like it. It’s been really liberating,” she revealed.
During the current COVID-19 pandemic era when most artists are halting their projects, Sebina is busy releasing hits between Botswana and South Africa (SA).
Talented SA twins, Major League DJz, reached out to her on Twitter last year showing their interest in working with the songbird. In the end, the collaboration birthed a warm and meticulous record called Dinaledi. Sebina, who is working between Botswana and SA at the moment, even travelled to Johannesburg to shoot amazing visuals of the song.
Dinaledi gave way to Abidoza’s Motho ke motho featuring Sebina’s soulful vocals and Jay Sax’s glitzy work on the saxophone. Motho ke motho is one of the trendy Amapiano songs at the moment and Sebina admits that Amapiano has been a great platform to collaborate and experiment with other artists. “I met Abidoza through Major League Djz and working with Abidoza has been great.
He is such a talented and very professional musician and I’m very excited to see his progression in the music space,” she explained. The versatile artist also revealed that her fans should expect more experiments from her and not just in the Amapiano space. Sebina recently performed in the second episode of Major League’s Youtube series called Piano City.
When asked what she missed the most about performing for the people, the artist who cannot help but release music for the soul tells Arts & Culture that she misses interacting with her audience in person and connecting with them in person.
“Feeding off the energy of the crowd is an indescribable feeling and I miss that”. The 31-year-old artist, who has an honours degree in international business from Malaysia, added that she is currently experimenting with various artists all across the continent and people should look forward to more collaborations from her.
Although Sebina’s current collaborations have put her up, her first EP called Neo (2017) was such wonder not forgetting her latest album titled ‘Lora’ released last year. She also said ‘Lora’ is being received better than she thought and cannot wait to see it grow and reach even more incredible spaces.
“The title single ‘Lora’ was recently used in the American Ballet Theatre Spring Festival choreographed by Yannick Lebrun, a New York based ballet dancer. My lead single, ‘Dumelang’, has been nominated for a best female single at this year’s YAMAs as well, which is my very first award nomination. To vote for me please text BFS02 to 16106,” added the ‘No Evil’ singer.
Besides that, Sebina’s debut studio single ‘Loves light’ (2015), was one of the songs featured in episode six of South African Netflix series ‘Blood & Water’. It is that song which takes viewers through the steaming sex scene where teenager, Puleng Khumalo (Ama Qamata) and love interest, KB (Thabang Molaba) have sex for the first time.
Sebina also worked with local folklore four string guitarist, Sebotso, to create an upbeat song to raise awareness about mental health. In the song called ‘Troubled’, Sebina and Sebotso teamed up with Danish-based producer Kirat ‘Kiz’ Singh and Danish artist J Spliff. Sebina has even revealed that the collaboration was one of her proudest moments.