Bongeziwe Mabandla Searches for Self on His New Album
After leaving home and finding new audiences across the world, the South African singer-songwriter turns inward on his 'Ndingubani,' his most personal project yet.
Tšeliso MonahengTšelisoMonahengJohannesburg-Based Southern Africa Correspondent
Bongeziwe Mabandla tapped into theatre, spiritual music, and storytelling traditions to create his new album, Ndingubani.courtesy of Bongeziwe Mabandla/Black Major
Three years on from his last studio album, amaXesha, Bongeziwe Mabandla is ready to lay it all out again: to dig into the different crevices that shape who he is, to ask what exactly each one entails and represents. Ndingubani is a self-study, an excavation of the different facets that shape the man who is becoming a legend with every album. The title forms the basis of the inquiry and response over 18 tracks.
Our meeting this time around is also different. For 2017's Mangaliso, we spoke in his Yeoville flat, looking out at the city as Johannesburg's sun prepared to set. In 2020, we discussed iimini in my Johannesburg home one early autumn afternoon before the world shut down. In 2023, I visited him at his new, spacious home surrounded by a forest to chat and chart all things amaXesha. The conversations have traced an arc, moving from the young man who had just delivered the reset of his career to the artist settling into the work to the musician operating at scale and touring the world.
This time around, a continent separates us. Mabandla cuts an assertive, if gentle, figure, sitting against a white wall somewhere in Paris. Moments into our conversation, he gets up to change into a white T-shirt with Miriam Makeba's face on it, something he does to cool down from the heatwave sweeping across the European summer. The detail is important; Makeba is one of the patron saints of the South African musician abroad, a reference point — along with the likes of Hugh Masekela and Abdullah Ibrahim — for what it means to do this work far from home. At 18 tracks, Ndingubani is his longest and most personal project.
"It's been tough, bra, especially last year," says the artist. He's reflecting on the increasing amount of time he's spending overseas and ruminating on the decision to leave the comfort of home for the unflinching expanse of the wilderness. "I'm just trying to do different things, spend more time here, and see how life would be if I was out here a little bit longer."
amaXesha sent him on a sold-out world tour through London, Paris, New York, Berlin, and Mexico City. Audiences who didn't speak isiXhosa found themselves mouthing words they had learned through repetition. The work became its own center of gravity and demanded that he be in Europe more often.
"A lot is different. When I made the decision to be here, I was just like, it's gonna be really easy, it's gonna be exciting. But there are definitely things that I did not think about. Just the fact that I don't speak French very well — it became the [biggest] problem. It's been different: language, culture," he says.
“There are definitely things that I did not think about. Just the fact that I don't speak French very well — it became the biggest problem,” says Bongeziwe Mabandla about living in France.courtesy of Bongeziwe Mabandla/Black Major
This journey of leaving the certainty that home provides for the indefinite suspension of an elsewhere is something South African musicians have been grappling with since the apartheid years, and before. Masekela left in 1960 and stayed away for three decades. Makeba's passport was revoked the same year. The Blue Notes moved to London in 1964 and reshaped the British jazz scene from inside their displacement. Ibrahim made Berlin and New York his home and had the great Duke Ellington produce his international debut album.
The conditions for Mabandla's stay aren't so rigid as to qualify as exile, but there is a foreignness to attempting to make a life in a wholly new environment that can be exacting. The geometry of displacement resonates in dissonant rhymes across generations, even when the politics don't.
But it's also been fun, he points out. “It's been a lot of excitement. I've seen so many things that I would have never seen, and experienced so many things I would have never experienced if I would have just kept my life the way it was."
Mabandla left his home in Tsolo, in the rural Eastern Cape province, in search of the promise of the big city. There, he studied, acted on television, and had another life unfurling as a musician. By the time his mainstream debut, Umlilo, arrived in 2012, he was a known name in the city's live music circuit. The album introduced listeners to a rising and exciting voice: acoustic guitar in conversation with Xhosa folk rhythms, a tenor reaching for something primordial and contemporary. But it also sent him into a sustained period of depression when issues with his then-record label interfered with his craft.
Mangaliso was the kind of monumental reset that future generations will reference. It is also when his creative partnership with Tiago Correia-Paulo started. The Mozambican multi-instrumentalist and producer, best known for his work with 340ml and Tumi and the Volume, brought to Mabandla's songs a sonic architecture that has defined every album since: sparse, electronic-tinged soundscapes that accommodated the silence and calm of Mabandla's acoustic slant, allowing his words to carry weight. Four albums and countless tours later, their chemistry on stage and in the studio continues to produce outstanding results.
“The reason I wrote about the things I go through is because I wanted to make them count,” says Bongeziwe Mabandla about the songs on Ndingubani.courtesy of Bongeziwe Mabandla/Black Major
The album was written in the double register that ranges from hardship to discovery. Mabandla speaks of Ndingubani as both a question and a statement: "Who am I?" and "This is who I am." The project was born in periods of reflection and uncertainty, and draws on childhood as well as the emotional cost of chasing dreams as an adult.
"I don't wanna say I have the clarity [of who I am]. It's an ongoing thing, self-discovery: the more you grow, the more you understand yourself; the more you do things, the more you challenge your mind. You travel a lot. But I don't think I could ever sit there and be like, 'Oh my gosh, I've figured myself out completely!'" he says, half-jokingly.
“I really tried to stay away from romantic stories and love songs, and I concentrated more on my life. I wanted to show a different side to myself, after writing two albums about relationships and love. I wanted to go deeper and talk about my struggles and tribulations and hopes.”
"Walila", the playful lead single, sits with karma, the way actions return to their author; "Ndikhulule (Depression)" and "Ukuyeka" turn toward vulnerability and recovery; and "Zama" weighs purpose. "Libambe Lingatshoni" leans into perseverance. Blick Bassy features on “Ndinje,” and the story of how the song came about is a testament to the results of perfect timing. “I had met Blick here in Paris, I told him I’m around, we should do something. We managed to do all the things we talked about that day; we talked about the song, about him finding me a venue to perform at, and about doing other collaborations we’d started. That was really special; it really happened organically. It just worked so fast and so easily,” he says.
“The reason I wrote about the things I go through is because I wanted to make them count, to not just have been times in vain. Just writing about them is to acknowledge what I’m going through, it’s power. It symbolizes the moment and immortalizes it forever. I want people to look at this album and think, back in 2026, this is what I was consumed by. It’s honest. I wanted to show other sides of my life, not just the highlights or the good times. I wanted to show you the darkness,”
