Zandie Khumalo says being a mom inspired her isiZulu Christmas carol

Zandie Khumalo-Gumede's maternity journey has inspired her to create an isiZulu Christmas carol in time for the festive season and she hopes to create precious holiday memories with her son with it.

As she gears to release her single titled Indodana on December 3 — marking her as the first Afro Soul to release a Christmas Carol — the singer tells TshisaLIVE that she has plans to one day release a Christmas album.

“As a new mother, of course I want my son to grow up listening or singing the global Christmas carols, but he also needs to know that as Africans we also have our own things, hence it's written in Zulu.”

“When you have a child so many things go through your mind, like how you want to raise him and what you want to protect him from — this idea was one of the things that I wanted my son to have,” she tells TshisaLIVE.

As a young girl, Zandie recalls her mother buying her a book filled with many Christmas carols and though she could not read or speak English at the time, pressing the little play button to hear the tunes meant a lot for her, so she wanted to create that for her son through her music.

“I grew up singing to these Christmas carols especially after learning how to speak English and then they made so much sense to me after that,” she says.

“Growing up and becoming a mother, I thought of how it would be if we'd celebrate Christmas without the western influence. I thought I should write a Christmas carol but in vernacular so that my child will be able to sing.”

He's only seven weeks old now, but Zandie says this is the first song she's going to teach her son. 

Being an artist means Zandie spends a lot of time on the road, and though she might have a hands-on mother in law and a nanny she calls auntie to help her when she's away, the singer says she's learnt to adjust her schedule to make sure that she always returns home to her son.

“It can be difficult to hand over your son to someone, so I had to find someone that I really trust and I trained her to take care of my son in a certain way to know that he's OK as well while I'm away.

“I still can't let go entirely — I'm still trying to learn to be away from him and be OK with that but I'm getting the hang of things. He's seven weeks, so we still have a long way to go.”