Melodic meditations on black
Jazz musician Thandi Ntuli’s latest offering brings together the broken parts of the South African psyche and makes them beautiful
Exile.
Noun.
The state of being barred from one’s native country, typically for political or punitive reasons.
Exile.
Verb.
The act of executing the same.
Pianist, composer and singer Thandi Ntuli has termed her sophomore album Exiled and she did this with the understanding that real life is never quite as simple as a dictionary definition. Instead, it is nuanced. It is lived. And so, it is fundamentally different.
Ntuli curated the album’s flow by letting it build organically.
“It goes back to the fact that when I was creating the music, I didn’t create the whole concept. It sort of strung itself together. The use of the word ‘exile’ explored different meanings as the album came together. I thought it would be useful to use that word as it works so particularly for South Africans,” she says.
In 2014, after 26 years of taming the keys, she plied them for the celebratory salutation of The Offering. Now aged 30, that alchemy has yielded the masterful Exiled, a transformative work.
Like her debut album, she released this one independently, under her label Ndlela Music Company.
The launch was held at The Orbit in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, on Friday April 13. Superstition aside, Ntuli’s performance was not only a revelation for her audience but for the musician as well.
“It was so packed. I don’t think I’ve ever played at The Orbit and had it that full. People were standing. There were some people sitting by the steps of the stage ... I enjoy that feeling of, you know, people communing around the music.”
Her thinking around the launch saw the concept of exile being articulated in more than the music.
“There’s lots of visuals that accompany it, and lots of writing — even stuff that was not included in the album … I put that together and I think people received the show well. It also connected the entire performance. As an artist, one of the biggest things I’m always sort of concerned about is: Will I be misunderstood? And I felt like everyone really understood, which was very rewarding and fulfilling for me. In that sense, the gig was totally beyond my expectations.”
Sense of displacement
Ntuli taps not only into the political but also into the personal. Because the word “exile” could never express just a singular form of ostracism. Of loss. Of going to pieces.
“There were ideas I was playing around with, exploring, which were intermingled. Questioning how black love exists, for example, within our families. Looking at spousal relationships, how black love exists within ourselves … My perception was that there’s some sense of exile still. Even though we’ve passed political emancipation. There are a lot of things which still feel displaced, even though we can’t put our finger on it.”
Ntuli says this led her to put Cosmic Light at the end of the album, as a sort of conclusion. It’s an ethereal composition. Benji’s Meditation surrenders itself as a prelude that sighs into the last track. The piece looks at the various versions of exile that people wander through, and how this journey doesn’t escape spiritual exile.
The violence of black lives
Ntuli, high priestess, conjures with composition. The album art is eerie. The music settles like a veil, colouring the way you take in the world. Bold. Beautiful. Even brusque in places. It lingers like scenes from an X-rated horror movie that show up in staccato. On the screen for a split second, leaving you doubting what you’ve seen as the impression remains.
“I started writing the music for the album maybe late in 2015, early 2016. In that period I was going through whatever process I needed to bring it to life. And if I hadn’t been doing what I was doing, I wouldn’t have been comfortable with the music or how it would come about,” she says.
She jokes about 2015 being a pivotal period in her career and suggests that maybe we will see a song named after the year on her next album.
Near the end of 2016, Ntuli attended a talk that had local poet and writer Mongane Wally Serote behind the mic. She recalls straightening her spine when he said: “The story of black men in South Africa is a story that needs to be told.”
On her album, the concept of black love plays itself out in an intricately quirky and upbeat contemplation called Complicated, on which she and fellow vocalist Vuyo Sotashe banter playfully. The melody has two parts because black love can’t be expected not to spill over. Black love could never fit into a single rendition.
“I always felt that there was a link between how apartheid meddled with the black family … There’s never been a time for black men to have a chance to be tender. A lot of the way that black men relate to black women now can be based on that,” she says.
She adds that, based on the stories that Serote shared with her, she was able to stand in the unequivocal certainty that the basis of black lives has always been a violent one.
“The violence also existed within the home. Black man to black woman. Black woman to black man. Maybe it’s with understanding that we can start healing.”
She adds that too often in this country we remove social issues from the past. We talk about violence in isolation, instead of applying sankofa — an Akan term that literally means: “It is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot.”
Ntuli believes in excavating the past and applying its teachings to make sense of the present.
She tackles the theme of broken black boys in The Void, in which poet Lebo Mashile asks: “What happens to black boys who go missing? Do we even call them missing or do we just say he is gone? What happens to boys who learn to die inside their skins the day they learn what their fathers have done to their mothers? What their mothers have done to themselves?”
An anxiety that permeates