It is early October 2017. Soul singer Langa Mavuso stands before a modest crowd looking on to the sloping hills of Northam, Limpopo. Dressed in a black top and short dungarees with a pair of clip-on traditional Zulu earrings, iziqhaza, Mavuso belts out songs from his short but impressive catalogue. It’s his first time performing at the annual music festival Oppikoppi, and the defining moment comes towards the end of his set. With the crowd firmly in his grip – drunken bodies colliding and lips locking to the sound of his music – Mavuso performs a remix of Vivid Dreams, the first song on his debut EP. Produced by Johannesburg-based producer Illa N, the remix features languid guitar plucks, smooth rhodes chords and neck-snapping drums.
“My lover’s name is a secret,” declares Mavuso at the beginning of Vivid Dreams. For the most part, he has faithfully kept that pact of silence, often speaking aroundthe hurt that inspired his best work. When asked about the subject of his songs, he says they are about a lover who has since died. He never names his dead lover.
Liminal Sketches, the breakout six-track EP that Mavuso released in 2016, dealt with themes of love and loss. In a previous interview, the artist said the project was an attempt at airing out an old wound.
“I wrote Liminal Sketches as a way of mourning a lover who passed a few years ago,” he told me during a Skype interview in 2017. “It was an attempt at catharsis. That was my way of interrogating how something so beautiful could find its way into your life and be taken away so easily.”
Three years later, the 26-year-old admits his debut album, Langa, has broken this pact of silence.
“This album is the end of the journey, the closing of the chapter,” he says now. It’s about finding a resolution to Liso’s passing. This is me saying: this is who I am. This is the pain I carry, and this is what grounds me. I was trying to find a resolution to Liso’s passing. I’ve come to the realisation that the end of love doesn’t always have to be painful. It can be transformative, healing even.”
Read the full article on New Frame.