Sankofa
Definition: a word in the Ghanaian Twi language that means reclaiming what is lost from the past.
From the dawn of colonisation and slavery to modern imprisonment under state of emergency regulations and the erasure of black royalty, the African soul and the black body have not known stillness collectively. A common offering for martyrdom is the lynching of our rights and liberties, which often leaves the black mind destitute in its pre-destiny for adverse outcomes. Multiple award-winning singer, songwriter, producer and renowned musical icon Thandiswa Mazwai understands all these black plights in the most ethereal of manners.
King Tha forays into the personal, political and spiritual with a love letter to her expansive Pan-African consciousness with her latest album, Sankofa. Recorded across the diaspora, primarily in South Africa, Senegal and the United States, the album is a compelling musing of native thought, language, sonic accents and a meditative response to a bedrock of crafted and curated archival isiXhosa music and field recordings. Much like how King Tha’s previous offering, Belede, was the mouthpiece of the Fees Must Fall movement, Sankofa comes at another politically important moment in South African history: the 2024 national elections.
The sacred opening prayer, “sabela”, sets the reckoning tone of reclamation pulsating through the album. We are urged to answer the calling of the soul. To stand firm in remembering our identity and manifest into being the collective progress of personal triumphs over generational traumas – an action King Tha follows through with on records like “Kulungile”, an ode to her healing a childhood wound. As a sonic spiritual medium, Sankofa conducts soulful seances over the ether of the Transkei moon and enchanted mountains, poignant with the echoes of our ancestors to sprinkle resilience and expanding Pan-African intellect on the pulse of today’s generation of forward thinkers and cultural custodians.
A critical plot point of Sankofa as a mouthpiece for the voiceless voters of a broken democracy, “emini” invokes a spirit of rebellion against political injustices at the hands of the ruling party. “emini” unpacks the weight of the societal plight we find ourselves in as the impoverished ones on the receiving end of corruption: from undelivered services and the stripping of fundamental human rights to significant death rates that could have otherwise been avoided.
The refrain “ilanga lashona emini,” which translates to the sun sets during the middle of the day, alludes to the occurrence of an anomaly and how, in some instances, said anomaly is the marker of a curse. The quote can be interpreted as a double entendre which comments on the effects of load shedding in our country. Ilanga (the sun) and electricity are both sources of power and light. When they are both absent, it feels like the day is over, and the day in question is both literal where we live and work and metaphoric in the context of being given opportune time to make the most out of life’s offerings.
Watch “emini” (Visualizer) here:
Strategically placed after “Biko speaks”, an exploration of the challenges of black emancipation, the sequencing of “emini” places us in a space where we are reminded of the consequences of forsaking the fairness in which hard-won freedoms are to be equally shared within the lexicon of a democratic climate. Thandiswa probes resistance against the continuation of the black body being at the receiving short end of the economic freedom stick, where perpetual poverty is rife.
Political commentary on behalf of the voiceless continues in “Kunzima: dark side of the rainbow” imbued with the traditional instrument umrhubhe and sharp lyrical verse, King Tha explores an often silenced topic: the dark side of the rainbow nation. With quotes such as “Their minds left destitute by greed”, “Basfuna s’file”, and “abantu balambile,” she reflects on the failed state and how the quiet ulterior motives bubbling since apartheid times come to light in modern-day corruption with leaders who put paychecks before their people. The collective becomes personal as King Tha uses her platform to speak as the impoverished to bargain with those in power to consider the ramifications of their greed. The people are hungry, and the leaders have the power to empower the country’s citizens to have a fighting chance and meet their basic needs, which is the core of Mazwa’s message.
Watch ‘kunzima: dark side of the rainbow (Visualizer)” here:
“Dogon”, “with love to Makeba”, and “children of the soil” fall into the all-encompassing umbrella of paying homage to African spirituality and cultural icons. Within the different sonic textures and access, the three songs enchant with trance-inducing frequencies which open portals into the ethereal; King Tha reminds us to tend to the unseen as often as it is unfortunate, the black body finds itself at spiritual war. As such, our altars must remain fortified. “Dogon” comes as a plea to the heavens for sustained healing, “with love to Makeba,” which features autobiographical recordings of mam Miriam Makeba, immortalises the ancestral influence the late Mama Africa continues to have as a spiritual force who used her voice for the liberations we all enjoy.
Subsequently, “children of the soil” charts the spirit of the late Mam’ Busi Mhlongo, who carries her ancestral presence in King Tha’s voice used to remind everyone that Africans were the first people with their own history, languages, and education that predated western civilisation – and that if Africans tapped into this ancient knowledge, they could harness tools capable of rendering current leaders useless in a rapidly-changing world. King Tha fuses her father’s fire, her mother’s water and the spirits of those who came before her to champion the reclamation of African pride and identity and its collective progression into the future.
Watch children of the soil (Visualizer) here:
Closing off the album by exploring the personal, we find “xandibona wena” and “fela khona”, the album’s love songs doused with sultry sonics and poetic prose. King Tha leaps headfirst into a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love which, in her resolve, is worth dying for, with “xandibona wena” finds her collaborating with Thandi Ntuli to express how happy her heart gets when she sees her romantic interest. “fela khona” has King Tha in a passionate fit, screaming to be let go if she is to die, she is to die into the person whom she says, at first sight, made her bloom into a garden; this can be noted in the refrain “don’t save me/don’t rescue me/ndifuna ukufela khona (I want to die there).”
It is difficult to not have time to reflect on the damage endured by the black body amid our brush with history, and Sankofa aims to elevate the willing consciousness to consider the world that exists outside of its bubble. I, for instance, may be floating about in the middle class, but I am fully aware that I am a mistake away from dancing with the devil we call poverty. Something can be said about how Thandiswa ‘King Tha’ Mazwai challenges the mind and churns political awakening with thought-provoking Pan-Africanism, and who can blame her? Does the country not need something radical to change the state of its democracy from one that benefits the select few into the bourgeoisie while the rest of Mzansi toils below the poverty line, barely making it into the next day? South Africans owe themselves more than a reclamation. We owe it to ourselves to champion the kind of innovation that will politically, economically, and socially liberate our people.
Sankofa: the mouthpiece for a voiceless nation pleading to be heard again.
Stream Sankofa Here: https://thandiswamazwai.lnk.to/Sankofa
