Simphiwe Dana reflects on two decades of music

Mail & Guardian

2 days ago

Unknown place: Simphiwe Dana says that the album she is working on could be the final one she writes but that she will carry on performing and collaborating.
I have experienced Simphiwe Dana's compelling presence on stage many times. Not to say that was her entire personality — no, Dana is much more.
But there are only a few people we meet in life, from close or from a distance, and can instantly tell — they do not walk alone.
Their spirit is that of our forefathers. It carries weight and respect. It announces itself quietly, with humility, yet with a magnitude impossible to ignore.
Now imagine having those thoughts first thing on a Monday morning. My nerves were jittering so intensely, I forgot to have breakfast. It's not every day that one gets to speak to a voice that has held us through joy, through protest, through heartbreak and healing.
At 10am sharp, as agreed with her PR person, I dialled her number. No answer. I stared at the phone. What now? Before I could decide my next move, the phone rang. Dana.
'I am so sorry I missed your call; I was just making breakfast,' she said, her voice as textured and calm as I had remembered it from countless interviews and performances.
'Do you want a few minutes to eat? I also haven't had breakfast yet,' I offered.
'Perfect,' she responded. 'Go make food and a cup of tea or coffee and I will call you back in a few,' she said.
I had to pause. Am I about to have a telephonic breakfast with Simphiwe Dana? Surely, I have lived a full life.
She called me back in 10 minutes. Coffee on her end. Rooibos on mine. What followed was an encounter with a soul who has been documenting the collective inner life of a nation for over two decades.
Dana's debut album Zandisile, released in 2004, earned her instant acclaim and multiple South African Music Awards (Samas).
I was so young but I still remember how Ndiredi played on every radio station and on every music show on TV like an anthem. It was a moment — a feeling. Maybe I didn't understand it fully then but I felt it. We all did.
Dana has released a string of powerful and genre-defying albums. From One Love Movement on Bantu Biko Street (2006), a bold and unapologetic celebration of black consciousness, to Kulture Noir (2010), which won her Best Female Artist and Best Contemporary Jazz Album at the Samas, Dana has always fused the traditional with the contemporary, the spiritual with the political.
Her 2014 album Firebrand further cemented her place as a torchbearer of artistic activism, and in 2021, she offered Bamako, an emotionally rich and musically layered project that she partly recorded in Mali.
Over 20 years since then. A number so large, even Dana herself marvels at it.
'I am really not good at celebrating myself,' she tells me. 'I always feel quite awkward about it. But this one feels different. I am giving back to a community that has given me so much for two decades.
'The response from them is thankfulness — and actually, I am the one who is thankful.'
Dana will be celebrating her career at the Baxter Theatre Concert Hall, in Cape Town, on Friday 27 and Saturday 28 June.
This reciprocity between her and her listeners is sacred, almost spiritual. There is something in her tone that suggests gratitude but not in the usual platitudinal way. It's embodied.
'Something that is rare in life is that someone can live off doing something that they love. I am one such person. That has been given to me by people who listen to my work.'
Reflecting on Zandisile, she tells me: 'When I listen to Zandisile today I think to myself, 'I was so young and wide-eyed.' I feel like I have always been old — and I am not talking about age.
'In many ways, I feel like I have not changed much from that young girl. I am not as naive anymore but the old soul thing has made me remain the same.'
That old soul presence — it is something you feel when Dana walks into a room or when her voice travels through speakers and enters you. She is not tethered to the conventional measurement of age. She is measured in spirit.
'Now I am understanding why the likes of Bra Hugh Masekela were so youthful,' she says. 'Because I think he carried the same spirit.'
Dana is working on a new album — one she feels might be her final one.
'This could possibly be my last album that I write,' she says. 'It is treating me differently. Not musically, but it is pushing me into an unknown place.'
Not a statement of resignation, but of transformation: 'There is nothing to be sad about. I will still be performing and collaborating. There is so much I still could do.
'The thing about writing is that you usually have to take time away — and with me, it happens to be at least three years. It is very taxing on the mind and spirit. I feel like it takes years off my life … Writing is not for the weak.'
She says this not with despair, but with an honesty that has long been her signature. Writing, for Dana, is not just creative — it is ritual. It demands from her.
Dana's work has always carried a sharp socio-political consciousness. Her lyrics live in the hearts of the people. They ask, they challenge, they comfort, they uplift.
'As artists, we are watchers and observers. I have gone through many phases and I felt every phase that we have gone through as a country. As they say, the personal is the political.'
The music is her lens.
'I try to understand why people do the things that they do in power. I try to understand if there is something that they are seeing that I am not seeing and I do that through the music.
'I am listening to the people and probing things that they care about. I literally have my ear on the ground.'
She pauses.
'I write about things that bother me. The state of the country right now is something that is always on my mind. Right now, I am trying to understand who we have become and who we will be in the future.'
And always, in true Dana fashion, she adds: 'Even when things are dire, there is hope.'
Dana's music is often described as spiritual. It is not just because of the sonic choices or the lyrical content. It is because she is a messenger.
'Music is from our ancestors. I am a conduit. And I must honour my gift. I have to be responsible for my gift and take care of that gift by taking care of myself.'
Twenty years on, I ask her which songs from her rich discography still move her as much as they've moved us.
'Songs like Nzinga — singing that song live definitely moves me. It's an adaptation of a Jonas Gwangwa song called Flowers of the Nation. I used to hear him perform it live. I would rush out and listen with my hands in the air. For me, that song is church. It is Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika.'
She also mentions Lakutshon' ilanga, Mayime and Inkwenkwezi.
And then I ask what she would tell her younger self — Simphiwe at 24, wide-eyed, dropping Zandisile into the world.
'I would tell her to go to therapy and deal with your childhood trauma. Don't use it as some kind of fact of your story season. Deal with your trauma as soon as possible.'
My rooibos has gone cold. I imagine her coffee has, too. But her voice still lingers — clear, intentional, present.
Simphiwe Dana is not just a singer. She is a witness. A question. A balm. A voice from the sacred hills. And if this next album is her last, we must receive it not with sorrow but reverence.
She is not done. Not by a long stretch.