Barack Obama is a fan of her Amapiano-meets-R&B melodies. The music video for her debut single Getting Late got millions of Mzansi’s citizens a-jiving. And now she now can add “Grammy Award-winning songstress” to her impressive CV.
Ladies and gentleman, make some noise for ... Tyla!
For the Jozi-born chanteuse was announced winner of the inaugural Grammy Award for Best African Music Performance by virtue (virtuoso, even) of her hit song Water.
Garnering this accolade makes her the youngest African artist to be awarded a Grammy.
And the 22-year-old musical wunderkind’s reaction to her praiseworthy feat?
“Everything happening is crazy, and I'm proud of South Africa and our music,” she said to Joy Mphande in an interview for TshisaLIVE. “People are loving us. I'm so happy. It still doesn't feel real. I'm just a girl from South Africa ... The response has been amazing. I'm proud and happy that I can be an example for other African girls and guys. South Africa, it's our time to shine!”
An alumna of Eden Glen High School, Tyla considered pursuing a degree in mining engineering, but her love — and talent — for minors and majors tipped the scales in a musical direction.
An embodiment of Joburg’s hustle culture, Tyla began posting self-penned songs — and cover versions — to her Instagram account while still at school.
Actor Ryan Smith (who himself boasts more than 18,000 Instagram and nearly 37,000 TikTok followers) is a former Eden Glen pupil and classmate of Tyla’s. He says of his school friend: “Back in high school, Tyla and I were involved in all things culture, from music evenings to school plays. It was always a joy working with her. It’s crazy to think that someone I knew and saw every day is an international star, but I am not surprised at all, because we could tell she was destined for great things.
Everything happening is crazy, and I'm proud of South Africa and our music ... People are loving us ... I'm just a girl from South Africa ... I'm proud and happy that I can be an example for other African girls and guys. South Africa, it’s our time to shine!
— Tyla
“Watching Tyla’s success grow over the past few years has definitely pushed me as a creative and made me realise that I have so much to offer the world. Seeing Tyla win her Grammy definitely sparked new inspiration in me and a lot of the creatives in South Africa. The world is finally watching us, and Tyla helped them see!”
Local music industry folks took notice of Tyla after the 2021 release of the music video for Getting Late, which scored a Sama nomination for Music Video of the Year in 2022 and led to her landing a record contract.
Fast-forward (without skipping any tracks!) to last year when Water caught the aural — and visual — attention of Tyla-philes worldwide after a TikTok dance challenge set to the song went viral. After top-10 chart positions in the US, the UK and Australia; a performance of the song live on The Bianca Show in Sweden; a gig on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon; and Barack Obama saying Water was one of his top tunes of 2023, global interest in Tyla came flooding in.
But lest we forget, Tyla’s roots are in South Africa. And here’s how Mzansi’s music aficionados sing her praises:
“As soon as Tyla became the first South African solo artist to enter the Billboard charts in 55 years, it was clear to me where that inaugural Grammy Award for Best African Music Performance was going,” says Tecla Ciolfi, editor and founder of local music news website Texx and the City.
“More recently, Water [received an award] for [scoring] a billion views on TikTok [and went] three times platinum in South Africa and platinum and counting in the US. The stats are incredible, but her talent and attitude are there to back it up.
“With absolutely no disrespect to Asake, Arya Starr, Burna Boy, Davido or Musa Keys, this [Grammy] was Tyla’s to lose. In fact, I think she’s good enough to play in the mainstream categories such as Best New Artist and Best Pop Performance in future, but I think it’ll be interesting to see how her label, Epic, steers her career from here. The fact that she’s so unapologetically South African has also made the entire country swell with pride — that type of personality is infectious in the best way possible.”
Former editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone South Africa Miles Keylock said Tyla was both unapologetically South African and unapologetically woman. He drew on a quotation from French literary critic Hélène Cixous’ seminal 1976 essay The Laugh of the Medusa: “Woman must write her ‘self’: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies — for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text — as into the world and into history — by her own movement.”
“Yes, it is time,” Keylock adds. “Time for a woman to write — and in this instance sing — herself into herstory.
“Why did Water become such a global Grammy-winning hit sensation? It sings to and through desire. No longer a patriarchal, genre-pigeon-holed nightmare of repression, but instead a rallying cry for feminine fluidity.
“Those antiquated Grammy Awards category tropes also no longer apply. Water is not simply ‘African’, ‘R&B’, or any of those flaccid ‘pop’ fallacies. It is quite simply a global anthem that is seriously sexy, sung by — and from — an emancipated woman’s point of view. The times they have a-changed.”
Bongani Madondo — who has authored books on black punk and pop, and is a contributing writer to Songlines magazine and the Sunday Times — describes Tyla bagging the Grammy as “fantastic news”.
“Culturally, it’s her time. She's the new Sho Madjozi: beautiful, alluring, racially indeterminate, bold as love, and creole as hell. She radiates optimistic energy. But she’s been working hard at this for a couple of years. She’s not a flash in the pan, as some people imagine.
Culturally, it’s her time. She's the new Sho Madjozi: beautiful, alluring, racially indeterminate, bold as love, and creole as hell
— Bongani Madondo
“Her win carries major cultural value too: we are in the age of a global black African cultural reawakening. Truth be told, it's really a continuation of the brave work started by the likes of Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, the Union of South Africa, The Blue Notes, Letta Mbulu, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Prophets of Da City, Soweto String Quartet, Die Antwoord, Blk Jks and Black Coffee.
“However, winning on an Amapiano ticket also tells us something,” Madondo adds. “[It shows us that] the post-Spotify pop has gone back to its African roots. Amapiano (and all its subgenres and evolving offshoots) is a singularly black DIY sound within which is embedded the black townships' ingenuity for self-inscription, reshaping, sonic expansion and contraction, and peacock strutting — a sound canvas on which digital dreams, techno-spiritualism and constant evolution are represented.
“Tyla is not even the best of this music, and it don’t matter. She serves as a powerful brand ambassador for the music of Abdullah Ibrahim, Early Mabuza, Chris McGregor, Pat Matshikiza, Hilton and Aldred Schilder, Taiwa Molelekwa, Thandi Ntuli, and now Nduduzo Makhathini: all Afro-futuristic piano prophets.
“Tyla is an Afro-mermaid force who combines the heritage of black soul, new jack swag, techno and house doof-doof with good old manufactured pop,” says Madondo.
“She might not be here next year when we look for her — she might have moved on and evolved into movies or something — but she’s definitely opened the doors, and we are all in now. They simply can’t turn us back.”
To this classmate, Grammy Award-winning songstress, woman, cultural icon and South African, we say: Halala, Tyla! Halala.
