A drum-wielding healer with a heart bursting at the seams with soothing hymns to remedy the wounds of the battered and bruised, former JazziDisciples member Josiah De Disciple has put an end to the anticipation of his latest album Satori. A follow up of his 2023 project Sounds of Gomora Vol. 2: Healers Avenue, his ninth is a menu replete with ambrosian food which come in the shape of prayers and spiritual pleas tailored with lyrical smocking.
Lasting for one hour and forty-eight minutes, Satori continues to consolidate Josiah’s throne and his rule within the piano space as the spiritually-inclined muso concerned with otherworldly mysteries and unravelling the purpose of humanity with tribal-tinged and hypnotic production. Boasting a sonic artillery of beatsmiths such as Da Muziqal Chef, Ntokzin, and Stixx as well as a rotary cannon of hard-hitting vocalists such as Buhlebendalo and Nobuhle, Satori is a gathering of minds soldered together with the stitching of amapiano, afrohouse, and jazz.
Meaning “sudden enlightment” in Zen Buddhism, the LP is aptly named with the compass of its subject matter pointing toward the true north of having a relationship with God and the departed. The needle of this compass, however, is still very much influenced by the external pulls of real-life struggles.
The album opener, “Mesiya”, is a humble prayer delivered as a poem by acclaimed poetess Nue Sam accompanied by an airy sax while Nobuhle lays down her supplications (“Impumelelo iyabaleka / Mina ngiyayifuna”) and laments to the Most High with honeyed vocals on “Isililo”, crying out for success while bleeding sorrow from the cuts of failure. The MaZet-assisted “Mina” complements the undertones of spiritual protection with bold declarations of her confidence to her divine ties (“Mina ngiphephile”). Along with “Memeza”, the first half of the album is a bundle of soft-sung but plaintive hymns geared towards creating an immersive mood conducive to heartening one’s own spirit and encouraging one to get in touch with realms beyond the physical through radical surrender.
Deviations from Satori’s core theme are few and far between, with “Show Me” alongside Omit ST, Murumba Pitch and Lioness Ratang as well as “Wena K’phela” unzipping the package of love, sensualism, and romanticism, while “Khetheyakho” delves into the critical aspect of life choices and how one’s trajectory is at the mercy of one decision.
Listen to “Khetheyakho”:
The bookending tracks of the album – consisting of “Winds of Change”, “Guitar Dance”, and “The Breeze” – are an instrumental-heavy feast which see Josiah step off vocal reliance to craft a club-friendly atmosphere to release the tension built up by the cumbersome first half of the project.
Broken into even sections, Josiah’s Satori is a project of a man gazing into the endless path of what it is to live and to be one with the higher powers. An anthology of purpose, love, and grief, the album is as much a jewel of realism as it is treasure of surrealism with carefully curated features and deliberately explored themes. Nothing feels off-key with this re-exploration of already chartered territories.
Stream Satori below:
