Acclaim for ancestral tribute

The Eastern Cape has once again held its own against troupes of musicians hailing from across South Africa in the battle for the highly contested South African Music Awards (Samas).

The lengthy official list of Sama24 nominees was announced last Thursday night at the Birchwood Hotel in Ekurhuleni where Eastern Cape songbirds Simphiwe Dana, Ntando, Busiswa, Bongeziwe Mabandla, Mobi Dixon and others were revealed to be going up against industry greats in their respective categories.

University of Fort Hare (UFH) music department head and award-winning instrumentalist Nduduzo Makhathini got two nods for his eighth and latest album, Ikhambi, in the best engineered album and best jazz album categories.

 Makhathini was in Port Elizabeth on Sunday to promote the nominated album which hit the shelves in September last year.

“I did the album as a way of paying tribute to my ancestors, but when it receives a nomination it’s exciting.
“However, the nomination does not necessarily belong to me; it actually belongs to the people who have supported my music from the beginning and those who have channelled the music through, which I believe are the gods of music,” Makhathini said.

Makhathini is no stranger to accolades as his seventh album, Inner Dimensions, scooped the award for best jazz album at last year’s Samas while Reflections won best artist in African jazz at last year’s All Africa Music Awards.

The 2015 Standard Bank Young Artist Award recipient whose music has been hailed as healing grew up in a family of musicians in Pietermaritzburg where his mother was a pianist and his father a guitarist. He studied jazz music at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

“I always want to specify that I studied jazz music at the University of KwaZulu-Natal because if I said I studied music as a whole, I would be taking away the credit from the semi-rural musical community in which I grew up and learnt to sing, and giving it to the institution,” he said.

Upon obtaining his qualification he relocated to Johannesburg in 2005 where he worked with the likes of Thandiswa Mazwai, Jimmy Dludlu, Jabu Hlongwana, Lebo Mathosa and others while teaching at the Central Johannesburg College and later Wits University.

Makhathini joined the UFH in 2014 and constantly travels between Johannesburg, Durban and East London.

Ikhambi is Makhathini’s first album under Universal Music.

Whether it is a rare work ethic or an unusual love for his craft, Makhathini has been releasing two albums each year since his debut in 2014.

His first and second albums, Sketches for Tomorrow and Mother Tongue, were released two days apart in 2014, followed by Listening to the Ground and Mutanda Ya Kwanza in 2015, Icilongo – The African Peace Suite and  in 2016.

Ikhambi was released seven months after Reflections last year.

“My purpose of making music is so people’s imaginations are cultivated so they can think about their pre-colonial histories and how important those are.
“Also, the main purpose is to be deliberate about healing and exploring these healing properties and how they manifest in terms of our physical existence as human beings of the universe,” he said.

Ikhambi is available for purchase on digital music platforms and at Musica stores.

• See a list of Sama-nominated Eastern Cape musicians and their categories online at www.heraldlive.co.za