[ad_1]
(Photo by Gallo Images / Soweto / Busisiwe Mbatha)
- Kwaito star Nomasonto Maswanganyi, popularly known as Mshoza, died on November 18, 2020.
- With a career that began at age 15, with her discovery on Jam Alley, the 37-year-old singer rose to fame for her hit song Kortes.
- Taken from the book Born to Kwaito, below is an essay on the artist’s enduring role in Kwaito.
Prologue: writing weeks in history
Yesterday, November 19, 2020, it was reported that Nomasonto ‘Mshoza’ Maswanganyi had passed away at the age of 37. In the report, her manager, Thanduxolo Jindela, confirmed that Mshoza died after being hospitalized due to a complication with diabetes. Mshoza is an artist at a special disadvantage in a tradition of South African black music history already inconsistently documented. It is for this reason that I was so keen to outline it in mine and Sihle Mthembu’s. Born of Kwaito.
A star whose power is firmly grounded in the history of South African black music and collective memory in large part by the power of a song. Kortes! I often say that not all of Kwaito’s music has stood the test of time and the evolution of our musical sensibilities. The hit songs that dominate our consciousness are also often cloying, old-fashioned, and bound together by bits of our collective nostalgia. But Kortes, that’s a strong enough thread to hold our nostalgia, evolution and dance together. Y Enters.
My memories of Mshoza as a child are very different from my memories of her as an adult. To the boy, Mshoza is the lady in the hat, surrounded by children whose dance moves point to their heads and temples as they perform the chorus lyrics. The girl cannot speak completely well, but she stands in front of the TV and sings “isgqoko! wen ‘uyang’hlanyisa ”- and will do it over and over again as the popular hit song continues to play on SABC 1.
She will remember these movements and letters well into adulthood. Where as an adult, Mshoza will become the Kwaito lyricist whose tone and cadence could run with the best of them. She is the young beauty queen turned rapper whose place as a young woman in kwaito’s history is unique, defying the expectations of fashion and song. She is the young artist who took up the more ‘masculine’ corners of Kwaito music and softened them with romance. Kortes, with Mzambiya, is a song that occupies the rough space of Kwaito music and turns it into a space for kasi luv and romance.
A teenage Mshoza backstage before a performance. (Oupa Papapa / Gallo)
In our constant efforts to have an interview with Mshoza, the closest I would come to meeting her would be on an impromptu WhatsApp video call. She was friendly and laid back and I was frustrated – we had been back and forth for a while and somehow we could never find the time to meet and talk. I just wanted to know when I could go to Durban to get things done. Mshoza was lying on the bed and in that room there was a little boy and another woman who I remember was his assistant. Mshoza took the time to introduce me to everyone in the room.
It was a disoriented engagement, and I left the two-mind video call, frustrated that no solid outcome had come out of the call, but excited that a whole Mshoza had invited me on a video call. Mshoza and I never did the interview, but my compulsion to recognize her as an important and prominent figure in Kwaito history would make me at least mention her in a chapter on Women in Kwaito. Thabiso Mahlape, founder of Blackbird Books and our publisher, would best explain these efforts when she called them, “a reminder of a capsule in time. A push for us to do more, in terms of archiving the moments and memories that continue to define us ”.
Mshoza Yi Bhoza
A defining moment for young women in Kwaito was Mshoza’s entrance on the scene. From the moment Loyiso Bala voted her first at Jam Alley in 1999, Mshoza would solidify as a formidable female lyricist in Kwaito music, able to hold her own on songs with such talented Kwaito lyricists as Mzambiya, who was also signed with BullDawgz. Entertainment.
And all this while she was still a teenager. Mshoza had already made his first million at fifteen. Your song Kortes, from his album First Lady of BullDawgz, it remains a widely referenced Kwaito classic today. I too fondly remember when I was a little boy in my rural home, with my unkempt, laid-back hair desperately in need of a treatment, choreographing Kortes as seen in the music video.
Bulldawgz ‘First Lady, Mshoza
With her deliberately ‘deep’ voice and street gestures, Mshoza proved that girls are not a one-dimensional stereotype, as she deviated from the image of the Kwaito artist who previously dominated the scene. His stage name gave notice of this intention to rewrite the rules, to be fair.
A ‘mshoza’ was supposed to be the female equivalent of a pantsula, although the term was later diluted to refer to women who chose relationships with pantsulas. Mshoza refused to fit perfectly into the existing narrative of the Kwaito artists (in terms of imagining herself in revealing clothing) because her personality was not centered on how she looked or danced.
Instead, he spit out bars to a beat and made a hit song. She remains the only female Kwaito artist dressed by Loxion Kulca. Wandi Nzimande, the co-founder of Loxion Kulca, tells me in a conversation we had about women in Kwaito that Mshoza was often called a ‘tomboy’.
This was a deliberate, perhaps even surprising, image to have chosen her, considering she had previously participated in local beauty pageants. Despite this change in the way she presented and conducted herself as an artist, to the young Kwaito women who had preceded her, Mshoza still chose to celebrate them as aspirational figures.
Young Mshoza praised Lebo Mathosa and Brenda Fassie in her song Mshoza Yi Bhoza, singing, ‘Bang’biz’ uSuperwoman njengo Brenda Fassie noLebo Mathosa ‘(They call me Superwoman, just like Brenda Fassie and Lebo Mathosa).
Born for Kwaito Now consider the meaning of Kwaito music. ‘Now’ not just as in ‘after 1994’ or the Truth Commission, but as a place in the psyche of blacks in post-apartheid South Africa. This collection of essays addresses the changing meaning of the genre after its decline and its ever-questioned relevance. Through rigorous historical analysis as well as threads of narrative journalism, Born To Kwaito questions questions of artistic autonomy, the politics of language in music, and whether music is part of a strand within the broader feminist movement in South Africa.
Born to Kwaito is a publication of Blackbird Books.
