Fun fact: The second song on singer/songwriter Samthing Soweto’s debut LP Isphithiphithi, samples audio from a Miriam Makeba interview clip during her 1969 visit to Finland. uMama begins her answer to a question about life in Jozi by stating that there are two versions — that of the have’s, and that of the have-not’s. “I will speak for my community,” she says, though this part is omitted from the song.
Her estate refused to clear that sample, which led to the audio being left out of the version everyone else heard on Friday, September 20, when the album was released to record-breaking acclaim. Isphithiphithi is the first South African album to have all of its songs (13 in total) charting on iTunes. Samthing Soweto is the first artist to chart at number 1 on the Apple Music singles and album charts.
Fickle things to use as a barometer for one’s apparent success, these charts. But Samthing Soweto’s the exception; he’s special, a rare talent swimming in a sea of somewhat’s, maybe’s, and if’s. He is the sonic accompaniment to perfection as it performs acrobatics in the face of nerve-racking mediocrity. He is our own black, beautiful, exuberant, excellent kang.
The artist, born Samkelo Lelethu Mdolomba and raised in Soweto, symbolizes hope for a generation of nearly-had-it’s. He was nearly famous a decade ago; and was in a band, The Fridge, that quarter-to made but couldn’t due to being blackballed by music industry gatekeepers. That these past two years have seen his star rally the forces to illuminate the sky in technicolour melodies is proof that miracles do happen, kinda.
Our interview takes place in Rosebank. September’s been showing the world flames, and the effect is evident in the weather — warm tending towards hot, with the casual breeze to half-assure us that we aren’t living in an AI simulation, which sucks because it serves as confirmation that the world is indeed fucked.
Samthing Soweto spots me walking into the joint and hollers. He’s got an hour to spare, and no more. His media profile has risen manifold since the last time we spoke, and the list of interviews he has to attend to — it’s the week of his album release — is long.
We start from The Soil that the rose grew out of. Conventional wisdom says that the film director Vincent Moloi saw the acapella group performing in Newtown, and sought out rapper Tumi Molekane with the hope he could get involved somehow.
“That happened many years later. When we started, we [were] still in high school, Grade 9. Maybe on the sixth year, that’s when we met Vince,” says the vocalist. “Tumi also liked us, and we started working [with him]. He tried to put us out, but he was really busy, and he was doing everything himself. So that didn’t work out.”
They met Dr. Sipho Sithole from Native Rhythms following that brief stint with Tumi. They had played everywhere, consistently, and with no pay, and nothing seemed to be working out. Samthing Soweto admits that they’d reached breaking point.
“No one was really interested in investing in the group. A lot of artists knew about us; we’d shared stages with them; when we were performing for free, they were getting paid. But most of them couldn’t do anything for us really, because we were so different and unheard-of — it’s acapella, it’s a risk. Finally when ubab’ Sipho Sithole was interested, it came as a welcome surprise ’cause we were just tired of grinding in the streets for nothing,” he says.
The first of many intermissions happens at this point, from a fan saying that he loved his set at some event. Samthing Soweto’s face acquires a glow; ‘ah, thank you dude’, he responds. Other instances include endless calls from people who want to speak to him. He answers one, and politely announces that he’ll get back to them after our interview. Making people feel included and considered is one of his many superpowers.
The artist had figured out a way to record the band in the intermediate phase between Tumi’s involvement and the Native Rhythms deal. “We still needed to formulate an actual way to record the music because that version of acapella, that style of music, mixing beatboxing with Afro-pop singing, [hadn’t been done before]. By the time ubab’ Sipho Sithole showed up, we knew how to record ourselves. Fifty percent of all the songs that I’m on were first started at my studio. We used to record these basic ideas of the song, and finish them off the following day at [his] studio.”
The songs he is referring to are from The Soil’s self-titled, blockbuster debut album released in 2011.
“Did he help? Yeah, he definitely helped. He put us on formal stages, he basically taught The Soil the formal business. But I can’t really get into a lot of that because I wasn’t there most of the time. When he got involved, I was out,” he says.
He spent many years trying everything he could to establish himself as a solo artist. Additionally, there were two critically acclaimed solo releases: This n That Without Tempo (2010) and Eb’suku (2014).
Of the initial release, Samthing Soweto says: “Those were songs that I worked on by myself, originally meant for The Soil. The reason why they existed is because I was working on that [recording] process. I guess I kinda did it to the point where I had 10 songs just sitting there. When I left, I was like ah, I’ll just drop these songs, it’s fine.”
He also hooked up with Bongeziwe Mabandla’s former rhythm section The Fridge, comprising Mothusi Thusi on guitars and Ade Omotade on drums. They also recorded an EP, Bass, Drum & Sam, that circulated in the underground til it found its way to many a tertiary students’ computer desktops, MP3 players and USB sticks.
“We had something really special with The Fridge. But we were blackballed by the industry. A lot of people didn’t wanna sign us. I’m guessing because of my leaving The Soil, a lotta people felt like they couldn’t trust me. There was a lotta rumours that I was on drugs.”
He wasn’t, and he takes a moment to address that on Eb’suku’s “This is for the Fans” with the lyric: “What’s this I hear about me smoking crack/ I thought I’d heard it all until I heard that crap.”
The Fridge had a buzz going, and were amassing a following. But nothing popped off. Meanwhile, his former bandmates were living lavish off of songs he wrote. Add to that, people kept saying that his solo stuff sounded like The Soil.
Talk about irony!
Anyway, band members were having babies, advancing in life and so forth. The Fridge had their final show in 2014, at a spot called The Cosmopolitan located in the Maboneng Precinct.
“After The Fridge, there was very little direction for me. Most people didn’t know that it was my voice on The Soil album, the first album and the deluxe version. I was on that album but never really credited accordingly, or spoken about in interviews.”
Samthing Soweto was effectively banished from the music industry, relegated to by-stander position, left to fend for himself while everyone else — remaining group members, management, record label — had the spotlight affixed onto them. So he dipped, in a sense, and would emerge from his off-the-radar stronghold to check out the odd live show and connect with people. He also connected with the poet Makhafula Vilakazi during that strange period.
“He saw me years back with The Fridge at Bassline. He approached me; he told me he was a poet, he tried to work with me, but things didn’t gel at the time, it just didn’t work out. I met him again later in life. He looked for me on Facebook. He got me, told me who he was. I already knew his work, [and was] a fan.”
Makhafula Vilakazi (real name Matodzi Gift Ramashia) was working on his debut album at that time. Upon hearing the songs, Samthing Soweto felt that “he needed a more artistic approach,” and went on to produce the entire project with the help of the now-defunct band Impande Core.
Makhafula Vilakazi invited Samthing Soweto and his band to perform at his sold-out show at the Joburg Theatre’s Space.com venue, and he appears on one of the singles from Isphithiphithi titled “Omama Bamthandazo”.
A call from a woman named Princess, who used to run The Platform venue in Newtown, marked a slow return to form for Samthing Soweto. The deal was for the show to happen mid-December, just when people start migrating from the city.
“We played to an audience of 80 people. It was a great show, it was awesome,” he recalls heartily. “I hadn’t sung live in forever, it was really dope. That’s how I got back.”
That show resulted in a call from Nomsa Mazwai offering him and the band a February date at the Soweto Theatre. The main theatre seats 400 people, and all he needed to do was fill it up.
“I played my Soweto Theatre show [on the 24 of February]. Sold out, for the first time. Sanele was also attending,” he says.
Sanele [Sithole] is Sun El Musician. The two had connected a few months prior to The Platform show, and were “working on some electronic music” that didn’t go anywhere.
“Sanele dropped a song [in April, 2017] for free on the Internet, and the song’s title was “Akanamali”, that we’d worked on the year before. The song picked up slowly. It went crazy, built naturally. By November, it was the biggest song in the country.”
The closest contender to “Akanamali” that year was Distruction Boyz’s “Omunye”. It was that huge of a deal. Samthing Soweto was back to gigging regularly, and hasn’t left the spotlight since.
Requests for collaboration came flooding in, in the wake of “Akanamali”. DJ Maphorisa was one of them. They tried working on something, but that also did not pop off.
“Last year, round about December, he hits me up again. He’s like yo dude, I know it didn’t work out the first time. Let’s try to it again.”
“At the same time, he was linking up with Kabza da Small, who really played a major role on my album. He’s probably touched all the songs there. That [Maphorisa and Kabza] combination is very deadly,” he says.
As it stands, Samthing Soweto has played a role in at least three music genres, to varying degrees of success. This current Amapiano phase is the furthest he’s ever reached. And he’s mostly doing it on his own, with the help of a dedicated team that handles the admin. Isphithiphithi is a masterful pop album; it’s the conduit, the filter through which his previous incarnations arrive fully realised.
Samthing Soweto used umam’ uMiriam Makeba, our own true North, to find bits of himself; to communicate his and his people’s precarity to the largesse, much like she did when addressing the UN General Assembly in 1963. When the estate refused to clear umama’s sample, they were inadvertently partaking in a tradition that ensures the routine erasure of the greatest among us.
He’s not the only one reclaiming her legacy. Msaki’s doing it; her latest, unreleased work is inspired by Miriam Makeba. Somi is doing it; she invited Zoë Modiga to the US to assist in her production, Dreaming Zenzile. Neo Muyanga’s latest installation, House of MAKEdbA, explores how “…her role as primary translator of what it meant to be an African in a world of declining empire has been reduced to a footnote of modern history.”
Continues Neo: “She was in exile for so long, that actually people in South Africa who have collectively short memories have started to forget the significance of Miriam Makeba — the sacrifices, the transgressions. She, I think, was [the] originator in some ways, to our ideas around what the black woman symbolizes as a powerful, transgressive, independent, autonomous figure.”
When we fail to see ourselves in artists who seek to remind us of our greatness, and of who we are and where we’ve been, we fail to create a space for our progeny to realize their full potential. We shall remain weeping willows and seekers, forever unsure and insecure of our place in the world.
I ask Samthing Soweto what is next in his world.
“Live music is declining. I don’t know…with my age and my experience, I feel like it would be nice to bring it back a little bit; maybe embark on a project that would do that,” he responds.
But how would it be different from what he did with The Fridge.
“I’d make a big production, where you’re not just there for the music, you’re there for the multimedia. Instead of just music, it’s a play — production, lights, stage, movement, costumes, themes,” he says. “The audiences want to be entertained, and they want to consume music in a certain way. And we seem not to be able to do that to the fullest.”
For now, we gear up to celebrate his wins at forthcoming award ceremonies, and to offer our shoulders to him to stand while he cops the sought-after Song and Album of the Year nods at the SAMAs next year.
- A version of this story appears on New Frame.
