Thandiswa Mazwai's 'Letter To Azania' is an intimate journey of discovery

AT A GLANCE:

WHAT: Thandiswa Mazwai's Letter To Azania.

WHERE: Lyric Theatre.

WHY: It's Thandiswa Mazwai.

FULL REVIEW:

For two decades Thandiswa Mazwai has been something of a force of nature on the South African music scene. It's obvious to anyone who's ever seen her perform that the singer is almost possessed by what she does, creating performances which have a ritualistic and spiritual quality to them.

So it should come as no surprise that when asked what her earliest musical influence is, Mazwai says that her assumption would be: "The first music I heard was the sound of my mother's heartbeat in the womb."

Since beginning her career in 1998 with Bongo Maffin, whose music captured a particular pan-African, toe-tapping hopefulness in the air and on the streets of the early days of the post-apartheid era, Mazwai has gone on to produce her own unique and award-winning solo albums.

These projects have carved her identity as a conscious, soulful singer with a particular knack for mixing influences from her childhood and the sounds of what's hip and happening in the present era. After a memorable cameo performance with BLK JKS at last year's Afropunk Festival in Johannesburg, Mazwai will return to the festival later this year.

First though she's got something else up her sleeve next weekend when she performs a multimedia, intimate live show called Letter to Azania, which she says will give audiences a glimpse into "intimate details of my childhood and my search for Azania and what it has come to mean".

Mazwai says that the show will "allow me to put up a show with a very particular focus instead of just playing a bunch of songs for a festival". She's presenting a selection of songs that have influenced her over the last two decades over a variety of genres from jazz to funk, reggae and gospel music, mixing her own work with some of those by her favourite musicians.

Mazwai feels that the hardest part of preparing Letter has been "what goes in and how. The idea of Azania possibly goes back to Kush/Ancient Egypt and that's thousands of years back. The history alone requires a few lectures and then there is the psychology of the oppressed and why imagination is an important part of resistance."

With a new Bongo Maffin single just released, it's inevitable that fans have questions about whether the band will be getting back together and when - but for now Mazwai can say that there is an album, which "is halfway there and we are pushing for a March release".

She's also looking forward to her Afropunk appearance because she believes that it's a festival "that allows for all my kind of people to come out, people who would usually be in the periphery or considered deviants."

•'Letter to Azania' is at The Lyric Theatre Johannesburg at 8pm on November 24. Tickets are available through Computicket