Bongeziwe Mabandla: amaXesha review – South African singer in his own lane

(Platoon)
The singer-songwriter elevates his reimagining of Xhosa folk music with synth-pop hooks and his melismatic voice

Over the past decade, South African singer-songwriter Bongeziwe Mabandla has been reimagining Xhosa folk music. His 2012 debut album, Umlilo, was a largely acoustic effort, combining the genre’s yearning choral harmonies with finger-strumming guitar and an underlying sense of jazz swing; five years later, on Mangaliso, he introduced electronic rhythms, which pulsated beneath his lyrics on love and loss and propelled the dancefloor stomp of his most popular song to date, Ndokulandela. Following the heartbreak-fuelled introspection of 2020’s Iimini, amaXesha (or The Times) vaults to the other end of the scale as his most expansive and wide-ranging record to date. Across its 14 tracks, Mabandla fuses Xhosa lyrics with electronic ambience, hook-laden synth melody and acoustic simplicity.

Opening on the plaintive guitar melody of Sisahleleleni (i), Mabandla’s delicate vocal builds to an anthemic chorus, which undulates through synth processing. The blend of acoustic and electronic continues on standout Ukuthanda Wena, where his strumming weaves through an arpeggiated synth, developing the feel of Ndokulandela to gesture towards the melodic electronica of producers such as Bonobo.

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by Ammar Kalia via Electronic music | The Guardian