Thandiswa Mazwai Live

Listen to Thandiswa Mazwai’s Trio set, recorded live at the Slave Church, Long Street, Cape Town on October 1.

[display_podcast]

As a member of 90s afro pop crew Bongo Maffin, Thandiswa Mazwai became the voice of the post apartheid conscious youth, combining sassily finger-clicking and jiving beats with liberated lyrics.

Eight year’s later, her debut solo, 2006′s Zabalaza took a hard left, infusing the funk and spunk that had defined her early successes with a rich blend of historical reference points: identity, sex, politics and the spirit world.

Her follow up Ibokwe (2009) saw the singer-songwriter travelling deeper into traditional Zulu and Xhosa melodies and rhythms to map out a fiercely individual route from past to present, signposted with borrowings from jazz, funk, Mbaqanga, reggae, quasi-gospel and thumping kwaito. The urban meets the rural, the personal slams into the political, freedom meets constraint, and compassion joins with complaint.