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As camera is from Bongeziwe Mabandla in the video for his latest single Abundancethe real stars of the show will reveal themselves: two women, dressed in a mix of white and black Xhosa traditional umbhaco and chic designer clothes. Indeed, Mabandla himself strikes a striking figure in the middle of the frame in his traditional attire; a herd of cattle grazing around them shone; and the forested mountains of South Africa’s Eastern Cape are still thriving. But stoic women, self-confident, bad ones! “Yes, they are my mother and my aunt,” Mabandla says while laughing. The song, he says, is “all about heritage, coming back and celebrating the women of my country and my family”.
Maintaining that connection has become more important for Mabandla now that the singer-songwriter – an indie icon in Johannesburg – has been away from them for the first time. After years of critical acclaim in France (including a nomination for the prestigious Radio France Internationale award early in his career), Mabandla has been living in Paris for six months in the middle of a European tour. “I’m everywhere these days, living between two countries,” he says, laughing again. “I wanted to see the doors that would open for me to live in another culture, especially in a big place like Paris.” It’s been life-changing, but I’ve been very careful not to let go of my South African side.”
There should be little risk to this: Mabandla’s roots are within their homeland. Blending the traditional music of his region with his modern indie electropop, his music is delivered in Xhosa – the magnetic language with a strong South African accent – while his speech brings the story to heart, even for those who don’t know the language. There is something refreshing about the way he writes, the Xhosa story is long, but full of fun pops. Now that Mabandla has five albums, he has started to feel that time is passing even though his music is refusing to show. She scoffs at me when I ask her age. “I’m old enough,” he complains. “Make me like an uncle.”
The title of Mabandla’s new album Ndirwanbi means “who am I,” which he says comes without a question – the phrase works as a question of identity and self-love, depending on which side you look at it. Mabandla has been sharing her inner music for a decade and a half – and now she’s writing about her struggles with addiction and depression – even though she’s been singing to anyone who would listen since she was a child.
He grew up in Tsolo, a rural town about two hours’ drive from the south-east coast of South Africa. The youngest of his children (and the only one who was at home when he was growing up), Mabandla had a strong connection with his mother and his home, and he recounts seeing a white house with its red roof visible in the distance when he walked home from school. He said: “Every time I draw a house, I fail to draw the house. On the cover of Ndirwanbi, Mabandla is walking in a scrub garden, carrying the drawings he made of the same house. “It was so curved and curved in a strange way, it looked so good that I thought I was in a concert,” he says calmly. I sang the songs of my friends, of my family. He listened with interest and memorized the songs of everyone from Tracy Chapman to Whitney Houston to Brenda Fassie, who is famous in South Africa. Even never thinking about the growth of his passion for work, he attended a local technical boarding school and began to explore this opportunity, releasing his debut album Umlilo in 2012.
Followed by the likes of iiMini and amaXesha were sad, mouth-watering tales of love and memories; for Ndirwanbi, “events wrote a record for me,” says Mabandla. In 2023 he stopped touring North America because of a cancer scare: luckily, the tumor turned out to be malignant, but it changed his mind. “On my first album I had a song called Nadeg, and I asked myself, ‘Where is the reason?'” he says. “Back then I was looking for the purpose of living, the purpose of my work. I wanted to make music, but now I have found my people, my audience, my dreams.”
Written after receiving medical treatment, the brilliant Kude comes with a melodious section, sparkling keyboards and a saxophone solo – the sound of Mabandla celebrating life and its full potential. Libambe Lingatshoni, who was expelled at this time, comes from a Xhosa saying that Mabandla likes: “It means you have to catch the sun before it goes down, so it doesn’t get lost,” he says. Holding on, therefore, to life before it ends.
But for every moment his voice is loud and clear there is another whisper-closer and more painful. In Mpendulu cold, Mabandla recalls a difficult incident he was betrayed by a friend. He said: “I trusted some wrong people. But some friends remain stable, loved ones in his life: “I am a team player,” he laughs – and the glowing Mngan’wam (or My Friend) wrote to those who stood by him in difficult times.
He said: “I have lived in a new and dark way, and this has scared me a lot. The choral and sad AML struggles with alcohol and addiction, and is looking for a way to escape – sung in English, as if escaping his language would help to escape bad habits. “On my worst days, I found myself inside the pain,” he sighs on the road. Release me drowned in Auto-Tune begins to suffer in a very direct way, his singing to release crying through his tone and voice. He seems reluctant to dwell on this darkness in our conversation, but admits: “I’ve always been a person with dark moments, but I like that I haven’t really run away from it (in music). I wanted to express all sides of myself.”
Much of Ndirwanbi was recorded at home, Mabandla’s first, but the album is accompanied by an aurora borealis of synth tones and layered vocals – like a small red-roofed house under a big sky. When his life was “almost taken away, it made me want to come back and give myself up, determined to do more,” says Mabandla. “That’s what I wanted the album to be about. There’s these challenges, but there’s also the courage in the human spirit and in myself. I wanted to inspire strength, a renewed hope.”
