It's not easy getting into Mamelodi when the eastern Pretoria township hasn't has electricity for two weeks. Protesters barricading the main roads have been burning tyres and stoning approaching cars and there's a stench of burning rubber - both from the cars rapidly executing three-point turns to avoid the angry mob and from the flaming tyres that billow a smoky column into the air.
My photographer and I are five minutes away from internationally revered musician Vusi Mahlasela's house when we hit the roadblock. It takes another hour to make a detour around the blockage and we arrive, after asking a group of loitering teenagers for "Vusi's house" - everybody in the area knows it - over an hour late.
Mahlasela has a new album out, a tribute to township music dedicated to his grandmother Mapetji Ida Mahlasela.
"She was and still is my greatest hero," he says.
I've interviewed Mahlasela before and watched him perform many times. I was a regular at the Bassline in Melville, Johannesburg, whenever Mahlasela and Louis Mhlanga were playing. I count his concert at the Market Theatre with Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil as the most enjoyable live performance I've ever watched, and that's saying a lot.
Gil was appointed minister of culture in Brazil in 2003, which suggests an extraordinary moment of clarity on the part of then president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, one of the most popular presidents the world's known. It made sense for a man loved by his people to give political prominence to a musician who uses his song lyrics to "address social issues, to voice protest of authoritarian control, to make aesthetic statements and to explore philosophical and spiritual themes", as Charles Perrone wrote about Gil in his book Masters of Contemporary Brazilian Song.
If we had a president half as discerning, perhaps we'd have Mahlasela heading up our culture ministry
As Perrone's description suggests, Mahlasela and Gil have a lot in common. If we had a president half as discerning, perhaps we'd have Mahlasela heading up our culture ministry. Like Gil, he's politically astute, having written songs about activism, freedom, and forgiveness and reconciliation with enemies, but also about love and
having fun.
"In 1976, when I witnessed the Soweto Uprising, my political education began and I realised how important music was. I began writing songs of justice, of freedom, of revolution, of love, of peace and of life. For these songs, I was arrested and thrown into solitary confinement," says Mahlasela.
His beloved Magogo was "always there for me - she fought for me, protected me and stood up for what was right".
Mahlasela, known by many as The Voice first learnt about music in his grandmother's shebeen. His grandfather, Elias, was killed in 1961 by a gang of motorcycle thugs who called themselves the Ducktails. They beat the family patriarch to death, apparently for the "offence" of being black on the street at night.
Thrown out of her house (women did not have property rights under apartheid laws), his grandmother made a new home in Vlakfontein, as Mamelodi was known then.
"My grandmother was skilled at brewing umqombothi," says Mahlasela. "And so she opened up an illegal shebeen, which was repeatedly raided by the police."
She was arrested more than five times, but her patrons loved the "hand" of her brewing so much she was convinced to come back again and again.
"The white magistrate asked his officers why he kept seeing the same woman in his court. He asked Ida to tell her story and, after hearing it, he told the cops: 'You will never arrest this woman again'."
Ida's place was loved for its lively musical gatherings at night, when people would use buckets, tins and plastic drums as instruments. Ingoma'buksu - "songs of the night", music rooted in mbube culture - would be celebrated with everyone singing together in full voice.
It was a place full of characters where musicians felt welcome, political meetings took place with gangsters at the next table
— Vusi Mahlasela on grandmother Ida's shebeen
"It was a place full of characters where musicians felt welcome, political meetings took place with gangsters at the next table," says Mahlasela. "But they all respected and loved my grandmother. She was a no-nonsense lady."
Mahlasela grew up surrounded by music; mbaqanga, kwela, marabi, mbube, a cappella and the music of Philip Tabane, who was also from Mamelodi.
His grandmother also played a lot of American vinyl featuring artists like Elvis Presley and singers signed to the Motown Records label.
For Mahlasela as a child growing up in the Tshwane township during apartheid, music was king. He spent weekends late into the night at the shebeen, though Ida would make sure the kids stayed away during the week so they could study and do school work. His social, political and musical education happened at Ida's place.
"We listened to the Dark City Sisters, Miriam Makeba, The Manhattan Brothers, and I was also touched in my musical education by dub poet Lesego Rampolokeng and other great South Africans, like Mongane Wally Serote and Nadine Gordimer, who I regard as a mother. She encouraged me to be a musician and paid for my music lessons."
After watching a musician masterfully strumming his instrument, Mahlasela built his first guitar out of a tin that had contained mango achar and strung it up with some fishing line.
"My friends and I made a band and created our own instruments from milk cartons, jam tins and fish oil cans for cymbals, and for a kick drum pedal we used a mattress spring and tennis ball."
A neighbour gave him his first real guitar. "He worked the night shift at the railway station and slept during the day when we would be banging our instruments trying to make music. He referred to us as 'The Pleasure Invaders', which is what we called our first band. We were eight years old," he says.
It's an ironic name for a band formed by a musician who now brings so much pleasure to people around the world.
Mahlasela prefers to talk about people who've inspired him. The Shebeen Queen album is a tribute to the music that he heard at Ida's place.
"The Umculo song on the album refers to music's ability to dispel boredom and make work easier," he says. It's the first single off the album and was written by the Mahotella Queens, an all-female band formed in 1964 by music producer Rupert Bopape featuring Hilda Tloubatla, Nobesuthu Mbadu, and Amanda Nkosi, and which was sometimes backed by the deep male vocals of Simon "Mahlathini" Nkabinde. The New York Times describes the song as "pure upbeat three-chord euphoria; the rhythm guitars are having a party of their own."
Mahlasela first left SA in 1990 through the Congress of South African Writers. The first city he visited was London, to participate in the Zabalaza festival arranged by the ANC. From there he was invited to tour Scandinavia, where he recited his poetry at schools and spoke about resisting apartheid through music and poetry.
In 1996 Dave Matthews invited Mahlasela to the US to join his label, ATO Records. " It was a big question mark whether Americans would like my music," says Mahlasela, but he had nothing to worry about. "I toured a lot of colleges and universities and received a doctorate of music from Michigan University [and later also from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and Rhodes University]."
Vusi was part of the Acoustic Africa Tour with Habib Koité from Mali and Dobet Gnahoré from Ivory Coast, and collaborated with artists like Paul Simon and Taj Mahal, who produced his album Say Africa .
Career highlights are the Mandela 46664 concerts in London and New York and a performance of the song Weeping at Radio City Music Hall with Josh Groban. In the video of the concert on YouTube, US actress Angela Bassett can be seen in the audience, up on her feet and raving to the music.
"I played a concert with Dave Matthews in New York for 25,000 people and I sang Boy in the Bubble with Paul Simon, who I towered above on stage. I nailed the song and he was very impressed," says Mahlasela, who has also played with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Angélique Kidjo and Natalie Merchant.
One of his favourite stories is about being in concert with Hugh Masekela at Carnegie Hall in New York to celebrate 20 years of freedom in SA.
"Man, it was such a fun tour, man," says Mahlasela. "That man, Bra Hugh, is very funny. He really knew how to make people laugh. I told him, 'No more keyboards on the tour - just trumpet and acoustic guitar'. He said 'Are you crazy?' but he went for it and people loved the organic sound. Oh Bra Hugh, what a man!"
Shebeen Queen is a live album that was recorded on the streets of Mamelodi, where Ida's shebeen used to stand. Lloyd Ross, who recorded Mahlasela's first three albums on his Shifty Records label, made a short film about the concert.
In a scene from the film, Mahlasela is entertaining people in his house before the concert and points to a picture on the wall: "That's my darling there," he says. "She was a very sweet person, my granny. When she was happy she'd hum while making African gin - mampoer - in America they call it moonshine. She only allowed us kids to be around and she'd give us cakes and sweets. She didn't want elderly people to be around because if she got cross, scientifically the gin would be ruined. She had to be happy when she was brewing."
The sheer joy in Mahlasela's music - his tribute to the sounds of the township and testimony to his abiding love for his grandmother - comes through strongly in the film, with people under a marquee tent getting down and jiving from noon until night.
"I'm so proud to be a Mamelodian," he says. It's the place that means "mother of melodies" and that means everything to him.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.