The birth of a talent
Prof. JEAN-RAOUL AUSTIN de DROUILLARD | Friday September 2, 2022 15:56
Thabang Molefe accompanied by an accomplice and implicated band that goes by the name of Hydro, offers the public a refreshing, dynamic musical performance. It was an uplifting moment amid the ambient gloom at Maitisong Theatre during the Maitisong Festival on August 26, 2022.
The lyrics were not understandable (an unforgivable shame after 20 years of residence here!), but it did not matter. There is no need to understand poetry. Poetry is this inexplicable association of words, sounds, and rhythms that touch indifferently the heart of all human beings.
In this respect, music and poetry are two artistic forms in close proximity to each other. The success of Hydro resides in his mixing of swinging and swaying movements, and lively atmospheres of jazz, as attested by the jeers and cheers of the audience - with the melancholic, sharp, and slow vocal elements of blues.
This trend of jazz and blues reveals an unquestionable and welcoming innovation in the Botswana musical landscape where years after years, Hip-Hop and Rap were becoming more and more tedious and laborious.
It needed years of arduous work to reach this level of art. But Molefe qualifies himself as a magpie that would pick up from the right and the left what pleases him and pile it up in his nest in order to create an imaginary and profuse world where indiscriminately his intentions mingle with the audiences’ imaginations.
This process of creation, without a doubt, took him to the world of great jazz and blues singers. If I may risk comparison, it is to the sorrowful Billy Holliday and the physical Al Jarreau I will relate his creations. It is no wonder: Molefe is the result of Mogwana traditional dance training at an early age combined with individual artistic affinities. “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”, writes Francis Bacon.
Molefe (Hydro) succeeds in creating a new musical form to put musical composition back to its initial vocation: a living masterpiece whose impact on listeners depends mainly on the cultural environment and the dispositions of each.