The self-described ‘performance artist who happens to sing’ speaks to us about his work
Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.At the top of his voice: Musician and vocalist Siyabonga Mthembu is the leader of the band The Brother Moves On.
This is perhaps why Mthembu can flit effortlessly outside of the confines of genre. Bending his lyricism and vocal instrument to his will, he offers new aural possibilities imbued with the memories and the knowledge systems of the past. This is not tautology, but rather a radical invocation of humanism, as I understand it. What Mthembu is pointing to in this distinction is a set of principles that implicate us all in the idea of being human.
Mthembu is also the lead singer of Shabaka and the Ancestors. His solo work has featured at the Venice Biennale , The Gwangju Biennale in South Korea and at the Sao Paulo, Brazil Biennale .He has performed on stages alongside adventurous artists and outfits such as The Metropole Orchestra, Tumi Mogorosi, Nubya Garcia, Hugh Masekela, Thundercat, Madala Kunene, Tshepo Tshola, Thandi Ntuli and Bokani Dyer, to name a few.
A few days before this, he performed chapter two of a South African symphonic jazz songbook at the Linder Auditorium with The ZAR Jazz Orchestra, which is comprised of various acclaimed jazz musicians. Written by Lindokuhle Nkosi, the notes start off simply: “In the burning of the Republic, it is always the flattened mountain that performs the first act of self-immolation. Then the shacks in protest of their own impoverishment.”
“I feel that, because he was able to make it such an embodied thing for me, similar also to my mother, that I don’t need for it to be a Christian ,” he continues.
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