Kgalagadi Soul - unearthing another gem from the desert
Thalefang Charles | Friday April 7, 2017 17:58
A year ago in Kuruman, South Africa during the Kgalagadi Jazz Festival, a new band was born. It was brainchild of Tumi Peter of BakTu Musik and Tomeletso Sereetsi of Sereetsi and the Natives.
“The initial idea was to have a band of Setswana speakers,” says Sereetsi.
Sereetsi said they wanted to have Tswana speaking musicians in one international band that would tour Southern Africa and the world.
The vision was to have Sereetsi from Botswana, Austebza from South Africa and Namibia’s Elemotho in the band. In the beginning they all agreed to the Tswana concept band and since they were all children of the Kgalagadi fluent in Setswana it was a dream come true. They were also all established guitarists with great musical profiles.
Sereetsi said they decided to name the band “Kgalagadi” as a “metaphor of what we are as musicians”.
“Kgalagadi as a desert, represents longevity, life against all odds and we wanted to show that despite our appearance, like a desert which have much more life to offer, much more soul, that is why we decided to call the band Kgalagadi Soul,” explains Sereetsi.
Just like a tough Kgalagadi life, the band met its hardship right at the birth as Elemotho unceremoniously pulled out. From Gobabis in Namibia near Botswana border Elemotho is one of the greatest Namibian cultural exports. He plays a guitar and sings in Setswana that is widely spoken by the people of Gobabis.
Elemotho setback did not however dampen the energy of the band as they roped in the talented Zambian guitarist, Mumba Yachi to feel the void left by Elemotho.
Yachi brought in new sound to the band and widened the musical scope of Kgalagadi Soul. With his haunting pleading voice over Central African rhumba sound, the band has managed to capture a truly “African sound”.
Austebza as the only woman gives the band that “divarish” persona. She is a talented and well travelled bass guitarist who has worked with the great young talents including HHP, Gang of Instrumentals, Maxhoba, Wanda Baloyi, Swazi Dlamini, and KB Motsilenyane.
On Tuesday Kgalagadi Soul performed their inaugural show in Gaborone during the official opening of the 2017 Maitisong Festival. It was a fitting performance on Hugh Masekela’s birthday, the man who sometime in the 1970s in Gaborone fronted on a band called “Kahalari”.
The three musicians backed each other on their separate songs. Ausetebza, a lover of bass, sang about love, Sereetsi, the man who made 4-string guitar fashionable, told stories of men returning from jail and gay marriage dilemma in Setswana tradition while Mumba Yachi took the audience to his home village of Mokambo on the Zambian border with DR Congo and brought some colourful sounds of traditional African village to Maitisong. The crowd loved it.
There was the ever-energetic Leroy Nyoni on the drums, Nseka Bienvenu on guitars together with the amazing Volley Nchabeleng on percussions.
The Maitisong performance was their third performance after two gigs in Pretoria and Sereetsi said they are now a “well oiled band”. He admitted that they started slow having to master each other’s sound and as evident from the Maitisong they are progressing very well.
Gaborone has seen the births of great musical collaborations that later died and remained nostalgic tales of men in beret and flat kangol caps. During the apartheid in South Africa, the ANC Cultural wing MEDI planted seeds of great protest jazz in Gaborone so Kgalagadi Soul, although it comes to the scene three decades later, it has the ingredients to take that Kalahari and Shakawe bands’ musical baton further up.
According to Sereetsi, Kgalagadi Soul aims to use music to fight ills like xenophobia that is leading to deaths among Africans. They would be exploring issues of identity, culture, and unity through Africa.
The band is booked to perform at the premier Grahamstown National Arts Festival due this winter in South Africa. Sereetsi also revealed that they are due to tour further into Africa and they have also aroused interest from Europe.