Days before his 80th birthday tomorrow, Caiphus Semenya sits at his piano in his Sandton home. He’s just mentioned that he hasn’t mastered the piano but as his fingers dance across the keys the melody suggests he might have undersold his ability.
His office wall is lined with gold plaques and awards, and black and white photographs of his wife Letta Mbulu, Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa, to name a few.
Each photograph tells a story and Semenya isn’t short of stories or shy to share them. His eyes light up with each retelling, they briefly close as if he’s transporting himself back to the moment he’s relaying. Each story ends with a chuckle.
“It’s been a very interesting road I’ve travelled. I feel blessed because a lot of people in our business never reach 80. Of those that I know that have reached 80, there are two people, but the rest have gone,” he says.
The Alexandra-born musician and composer’s first encounter with music was when he was part of the Katzenjammer Kids, a vocal quartet named after the comic book of the 1950s that cost 10c. Later they were recruited by the Union of Southern African Artists, which was based in Dorkay House, Johannesburg. They were cast in the musical King Kong, which ran in SA in 1959 and then again in the UK in 1961. This would be his first international trip but not his last.
In 1964 he was again recruited by the union to travel to New York as a cast member of the musical drama Sponono. It was after this trip that the US became the incubator for his dreams.
“When everybody was ready to go, I still had about four years on my passport, so when the show folded and everybody decided to go home I decided I was going to stay because I wanted to study music. That’s always been my passion. I wanted to study theatre as well, also one of my passions,” he said.
Having reconnected with Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa in New York, Semenya was determined to pursue his passions.
But his dream was shattered when music schools said he was too old to enrol.
“I was too old to get into that school at age 25. Most of the kids started at 15. Because I couldn’t read or write music, I asked if there wasn’t something they could do for someone like me from South Africa because we didn’t have those institutions. After auditioning me, they found that I could hear all the notes, I could name the chords. They were surprised because I could do all that but I couldn’t read music,” he said.
It was Makeba who encouraged him to apply at schools and pursue his passion and it was she who offered Semenya his first job, singing with her. After being told he was not eligible to study in New York, Semenya took private music-writing lessons and sang as a backing vocalist for Makeba at the legendary Village Gate jazz nightclub.
With his dream to study put on hold, Semenya figured he’d work, save money and then buy a plane ticket for his then fiancée, Letta Mbulu, who he’d first met when he offered her a bite of his apple. He’d already paid lobola for Mbulu, and Makeba offered to pay for the ticket so she could join him sooner.
“I said, wow, really? She said yes because we were all family. I immediately called Letta. When you made a call to South Africa back then, you had to book the call. You would have to call someone at the union to tell Letta to expect a call. You couldn’t say “tell Letta she’s getting a ticket”, you had to whisper “tell Letta I’ll call her tomorrow”.
After Mbulu’s arrival in the US the couple began to tour with Makeba, who by then had been declared persona non grata by the apartheid regime. The Semenyas were guilty by association.
They had left their eldest son in SA with their families. Semenya said he was devastated to learn that he couldn’t return home for Mbulu’s mom’s funeral. It also meant he wouldn’t see his family and his son.
Semenya jokes that he spent as long in exile as Mandela spent in jail. “It was after 27 years, just like Mandela. When I left, I think Mandela was sentenced to prison the same year I went to the States, and I came back the same year he was released. That’s very strange,” he laughed.
Over the next years, Makeba played a pivotal role in their lives. Semenya hailed her as the trailblazer who paved the way for other South African artists to pursue their dreams. In America they were finally free of pass laws, curfews and the oppressive state.
But freedom was not without suffering, which they quickly discovered once their passports expired and they were not allowed to return home. While they weren’t allowed in SA, the rest of Africa wasn’t off limits. They performed in Botswana, Tunisia, Libya, Lesotho, Kenya and many other African countries. Semenya laughs about how they travelled on Guinean passports.
“They let us into Guinea because we were Miriam’s friends. When we met the president, Sékou Touré, he invited us to lunch. That was the first time that I had lunch with the president of a country. He was a very nice person. He asked when we were leaving. The following day Miriam came to us and said the president says he noticed we don’t have travelling documents and he’s offering you a passport. We drove over to State House, they took our pictures and then the following day we had our passports. That made life a little easier,” he recalls with another chuckle.
Someone he’ll never forget meeting is Quincy Jones in the 1970s. Jones had heard that there was a South African artist who’d written music for Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba. He was writing the score for a movie set in West Africa and wanted the music to be authentic.
Semenya’s manager told him about the opportunity and sent him Jones’s number. After tea with Jones, Semenya was tasked with writing three songs for three scenes in a film.
Semenya wrote the music and got Mbulu to sing. As we sit in his Sandton living room, Semenya smiles, his eyes light up, he leans forward as he recounts in detail how Jones reacted to the songs and their first studio recording.
“My heart was pounding like crazy. Some of the people in that band were some of the top musicians who were well known in the jazz world. When the beat started, the ancestors were with us, we sang it to the last beat and it was perfect. I was shocked myself when it stopped and then when we turned around, everybody was standing up and applauded.
My heart was pounding like crazy. Some of the people in that band were some of the top musicians who were well known in the jazz world
— Living African Jazz legend Caiphus Semenya
“So then we did the next song. As we left, Quincy came out and said: ‘You don’t know how proud you’ve made me today. Here, Africans are looked at as savages and uncultured but today you looked at that thing and you sang it and it was perfect. What savage does that?’ “He said: ‘Thank you very much, you’ve made me very proud.’ From that moment on, when Quincy was doing anything which had some kind of African component, he would call me.”
It’s apparent Semenya has many more stories, but he takes me on a tour of his house. Passing by the pool table, he reveals that he enjoys a friendly game of pool to relax. But that’s not his happy place. The next room is where he finds solace. It’s his library, with books from ceiling to floor and wall to wall. His collection is categorised according to themes, with African literature being the most prominent. Then there are ancient African books, the Bible and the Koran in the religious section, along with books on mythology and philosophy.
These are books he’ll have time to read when he retires next year. But for now, he’s focused on his 80th birthday concert on August 24 at which musicians such as Tsepo Tshola, Sipho Hotstix Mabuse, Condry Ziqubu and many more will pay tribute to Semenya. Proceeds of the concert will go to the Semenya’s National Academy of Africa’s Performing Arts, in Jabulani, Soweto.
In his more than 50 years in the music industry, Semenya, who has done it all, has only one regret — and that is not studying music formally. This is why the Semenyas started a music and acting school in Soweto.
The couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2017 and Caiphus described Letta as a “courageous woman”.
“My own philosophy is that if you love someone from day one and you really love them, then there is no need 20 or 30 years later to find reason not to love them any more. She feels the same way. Couples quarrel but we’ve never had an occasion where we’ve thought, you go your way and I’ll go mine,” he said.
Before retiring, Caiphus Semenya will release an album, his first in nearly 20 years. He laughs about trying to convince his wife of some 50 years to sing on the promised album.
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