Therese Owen
If you’re in or around Soweto on Saturday night, head for the Soweto Theatre for what should be an amazing musical experience. Kheti ( pictured) is celebrating the launch of her second album, #WozaMoya. She will be performing tracks from that as well as her debut album, Exemplify, with a six-piece band. The evening is billed as Kheti and Her Afro Twist Live in Concert.
This poet, activist and musician says that her second album deals with spiritual reconnectivity.
“I put a # there because we must trend the spiritual reconnectivity,” she explained.
“ Woza Moya is an offcut of Nkosi Sikhelel’ iAfrika. Enoch Sontonga wrote it as a prayer and we remixed it to make it our national anthem.
“What fell on to the editing floor was the incantation which is Woza Moya. At the end of the prayer in our culture the elder does a blessing which is akin to putting the prayer into an envelope and sending it to God. As we grow older we realise there is more to life than merely what we do. The world has an energy force and I am tapping into that energy.”
For the concert she has invited Zuluboy to perform a track with her. “Zuluboy and I recorded Wayikhoma Lena( He Went That Way) together for my album. It is a love story where he decides to leave her and she is still in love with him. He is her stallion and he gallops into the distance with her heart still attached.”
Kheti also recorded a track with the Mohatella Queens. Simuntu Munye is the current single on air.
“The track deals with xenophobia across the continent. We should be focusing on human beings rather than the differences that divide us. This album is about spiritual reconnectivity, of human beings trying to be better people.”
Kheti says her decision to work with writers, poets and “hip hop ciphers” led her melodic poetry into Afrosoul and jazzy tones.
l The concert at Soweto Theatre starts at 8pm on Saturday.