What started out as just a regular poetry session in his home town to help out a friend has snowballed into a bustling career that today sees Motswitla Hlakotsa, aka Tswi, a hot commodity on the commercial gospel front.
Within the space of a year Tswi has shared platforms with local gospel outfits 50 Fifty Family, Ernie Smith, The Arrows, Pastor Benjamin Dube, Swazi Dlamini and more, and international acts Ken Reynolds and US Grammy-nominated artist Emmanuel Lambert, aka The T.R.U.T.H
Tswi recently released his debut album – a gospel poetry offering, an unofficial first for South Africa, called Pure Jesus Poetry, and some of its tracks are already receiving airplay on Gagasi FM.
Tonight chatted with Tswi about his career: “It all started 14 years ago when a friend of mine back home in QwaQwa (Eastern Cape) was organising some poetry sessions at a local library and told me to come and do something.
“At the time I thought it wasn’t for me because I was just known for being good at creative writing, but he convinced me. I put together a few words and, to my surprise, people loved it. I’ve been doing poetry ever since,” he explained.
Over the years Tswi became renowned for his slam poetry and is now a gospel poet.
“God started speaking to me about this album in 2008 and said it would be pure Jesus poetry. So this album is 10 tracks of pure poetry. I’d love to explore a mix of poetry and music, so probably with the next album I’ll do so,” he said.
Tswi is partnered with Swazi Dlamini Productions in taking his debut album forward.
“I produced the album myself. I’ve partnered with Swazi to promote and market it. At this stage the goal is just to get the album out there because there is no market for this genre. Some people might see that as a negative, but I see it as gap in the market,” explained the artist and businessman who also has plans to release a book and DVD.
In the background Tswi is also hard at work with his company Kingdom Artibus, with the aim being to help other spoken word artists find a professional platform.
“There are gospel spoken word artists out there, but they have no platform. We’ve already signed on one artist, Celestial Mic, whose album we will release next year,” explained Tswi.
lTswi will be offering some of his poetic masterpieces at Carols for Hope at the Durban City Hall tomorrow.