Desire Marea’s voice is a culmination of many South African voices, a mouthpiece for a choir of spirits and entities. Following 2020’s critically acclaimed self-titled debut, On the Romance of Being is immersed in the communal, ceremonial and healing qualities of music.
After the striking track and accompanying video, Be Free, which explores queer love within South Africa’s hyper-masculine world of taxi gangs, he now shares the delicate and brooding 8-minute epic, Rah.
Sung entirely in isiZulu, the track is a powerfully stirring cry on the planet and human interference. "Mother is wounded / And the long awaited day will soon come," Desire ruefully cries, calling for a new dawn.
"Rah is a song lamenting the decay of the earth and the anxiety of existing in it, with it and as it," he comments.
"Is self-cannibalisation just the order of nature? Is it part of the healing? Is there renewal on the other side of disaster? Still, we beg for repentance," says Desire Marea.
Listen to the song below:
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