Whether he’s in the boardroom pulling strings behind the scenes or finessing a guitar on stage in front of an engrossed crowd, the talent that is BandaBanda doesn’t just make music for the sake of putting out art but to make memories worth experiencing as much as buying. With his Isikhathi and Zinza campaigns done and dusted in Durban, BandaBanda continues to push frontiers in the space of exec-cum-artists.
The musician shared what his upbringing was like, from his mixed heritage to the unknown origins of his love for music.
“I am a guy who comes from a humble family with Malawian roots mixed with Zulu culture from my grandparents’ side—the Bandas are originally from Malawi, while my grandmother came from Eshowe. So, I came to doing music by chance because I don’t have any background in music within my family that I know of. I grew up in KwaNdengezi, which was very quiet and impoverished and undeveloped, so I don’t know where I got my love for music if I’m being honest because it certainly wasn’t from that environment either. I think my thing for music came from church and seeing people sing and play the keyboard, which probably also sparked my curiosity in the course of time,” he said.
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Bringing with him the grist of executive experience to the mill, BandaBanda performed at the Playhouse Theatre in Durban in March 2026 under the campaign of the Isikhathi Tour before doing the Zinza Tour. He talked about the workings behind mixing the worlds of visual media and live performance to create a hybrid artform.
“I’ve worked with Busi Mhlongo as a musician, and also Sibongile Khumalo and Thandiswa Mazwai for a number of years, so I’ve been part of the South African music story for quite a long time. I’ve seen how careers are sustained, and I’ve seen how things are meant to be curated and put out. That’s just on the music side. Then I got to work as a creative and brand strategist and producer for people like Zoe Modiga, for whom I produced Inganekwane and Nomthandazo. I’ve also done a lot of shows and productions under BandaBanda Agency.
“With all that experience, I came into my music with the revelation that South African artists don’t really devote a lot of time to visual work because of how we are socialised. We don’t take time to do visual work apart from basic music videos where we are just dancing. So with the visual album, I tackle this because what you see in it is me on stage performing my music from an album that is already out there, and the only difference is that I’m doing it live and I’m shooting it as a real-time presentation rather than pre-made music videos. The production is there but it’s not overproduced either. I wanted to incorporate the best of both worlds, showcasing what studio output looks like while also keeping the elements of a live performance,” he said.
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BandaBanda shared insight as an ambidexterous person mentally, with him being able to function as a music executive while also understanding the intricacies of art.
“The left side of my brain works as well as my right. For the longest of time, I struggled with both. If I spoke to people on the right and all of a sudden started using my left, they’d find me intimidating because I’d start acting like an exec. So it was always a struggle, until I took some time off to reason better on the left while balancing both worlds, and that in itself became a superpower. The skill shone even more when I started working with Modiga because I was able to act as a producer during the stages of conceptualising ideas before getting into the business side of things—basically the type of thing that Jay-Z would do. That’s not something that is common in the music industry here in Africa because creativity and business are normally separated,” he said.
He talked about implementing the strategy of delegating tasks to specialists in order to keep his mind firmly planted in the music.
“With me going back to being an artist and also bringing with me the knowledge of being a businessman, I get to use both skills, but I still need a mirror. I put together a team of specialists in their respective fields so that they can handle other aspects of the business part of things so that I get to focus exclusively on the art. I don’t want to be that guy using my own strategies and mirroring myself by doing everything just because I understand the ecosystem well—I don’t have that kind of ego and that approach would be so blinding to me,” he said.
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The multihyphenate shared his greatest wish when it comes to the impact of his music.
“Due to my history and the people I’ve worked with, I want to make sure that people remember who they are through my music. I want my art to help them to remember the past, to exist in the moment and to also look forward to the future. I want to preserve a story of who we’ve been and who we are supposed to be in the future,” he said.
BandaBanda championed being able to phase into different spaces and incorporating myriad elements in the making of his music.
“Integretion is very important. Genres are there and as an exec I can confirm that genres exist to put things in their compartments. They are used to sell an idea. For me, I look at music as a feeling beyond genre. I always try to integrate different ideas and philosophies in my music so I can feed into a certain audience,” he said.
