Acclaimed pianist and vocalist Thandi Ntuli will showcase her introspective original works at The Cape Town International Jazz Festival (CTIJF). She spoke to JANE MAYNE about the dynamism of South African music and how her artistic expression connects to what she sees happening locally.
Drummer Sphelelo Mazibuko and percussionist Tlale Makhene will join Thandi Ntuli on this year’s CTIJF stage. This time round the pianist’s immersive explorations will feature in a project format which she says partly draws on, “the vision of my latest album in terms of having more improvised kinds of expressions of songs. I won’t be playing with a full band, I’m going to be doing a solo project that I released, which is a collaboration with drummers. I’m very excited to be working with Sphelelo and Tlale, and I’ll be on piano, synths and vocals.”
Born in Soshanguve (Pretoria), Thandi grew up in a musical milieu. Her introduction to the piano began at age four with classical piano lessons under the tutelage of Ada Levkowitz. Now with a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Performance (University of Cape Town) in hand, and a string of awards to her name, the pianist has distilled her profound, and somewhat pensive, soundscape into an amalgam of accessible worldly jazz.
Identity and culture
How would she describe her technique? “I’m always trying to work out the stuff that’s in my head and using the instrument to do that. For me, identity has been a huge part of what I do and what I’m trying to understand. I grew up playing classical music, and for obvious reasons, as much as I love it, I didn’t see myself in that music. I went to university and I started playing jazz, which brought me a little bit closer, because the African American story is very similar and reflects many aspects of the South African story,” she says.
“So, I found bits of myself in that, but still got to a place where I felt like this is not quite it though, because there’s a certain expression that is very uniquely American that is not fully recognized within myself. So, I’m seeking something that feels authentic to me without trying to pretend that the past hasn’t happened. I don’t believe that South African music is a specific thing that’s cast in stone. I think it’s dynamic. I think it’s evolving. And I think that I’m trying to express that same thing – of embracing all aspects of myself. Embracing the parts of me that have lost a bit of my identity and culture, but also trying to very deliberately to bring it back into my way of being.”
Social commentary
There’s a poignancy and depth to her songwriting, what underpins that sensitivity that’s so audible to the listener? “I would say it’s my awareness of things in the country. Where we’re at and just the general awareness, and wanting to use my music as a sort of social commentary, or my reflection on what I see in society. I guess the poignancy comes from the fact that I’m reflecting things that I feel very close to in terms of the messages that I bring through. But they also reflect the environment that I’m currently in, which is South Africa and wanting just to share music and a message that kind of connects my artistic expression to the things that are happening locally.”
The pianist’s contemplative musing was also aired on her 2018 Exiled release. She explains that, “that was not a physical exile that I was expressing in terms of my experience. What I felt was more a spiritual and emotional cultural exile in the sense of being a young South African who has obviously never really experienced the period of apartheid, but has been living on the other side in our democratic dispensation, and seeing the social ills that are inherited.”
“Also, the personal things that I struggle with are inherited from what I believe to be the legacy of the country’s history. So, the exile was an internal one. The exile was expressed in the sense of feeling displaced, and just not knowing who I am, where I stand, how that affects you and how I relate to the world around me, and how I’ve experienced relationships. It was coming more from an internal experience, and was more like a metaphysical kind of expression of exile rather than physical.”
Expansive vistas
Thandi’s expansive musical vistas reflect what’s seemingly a compassionate gaze at the world around her. Her compositions clearly reveal the more introspective side of herself? “Yes, definitely. I do think that I am expressing an inward world. I kind of use music to work things out, if that makes sense. So, if there’s something happening that I experienced, for example with my song New Way, I was really affected by the specific story of Karabo Mokoena, as well as the responses on social media thereafter. We know that femicide happens quite a lot in South Africa, and it really like made me feel sick. So, I kind of go to the piano to work things out, and I make music around my internal struggle around certain things that are happening around me. So maybe, yes, the tempos do reflect that inward looking nature.”
Carlos Niño collab
Thandi has been in the producer’s seat for numerous albums – it must feel good to shape one’s own work? “Generally, yes, I do produce my own work. The last release that I did with Carlos Niño was a collaboration which he did produce, and I think they are different. I don’t think that one is better than the other because I value the power of collaboration when you are creating. You can think of music and yourself and your expression in a very different way when you’re being guided by somebody else, versus how you always see things. It’s very similar to being in relationship and in community with people.”
“I think it’s very valuable to be by yourself and to understand the way you see things and understand them. But you do kind of need people to bounce your ideas off and sometimes also to check yourself and see that, ‘ah, actually I’m not necessarily right, about how I see this’, or my perspective is not necessarily complete. So, I don’t think either is better I just think both have their place.”
‘Secret Keeper’
Her Secret Keeper track was inspired by the notion of hidden history and information on heritage being withheld. “Secret Keeper came from a place just reading about who we are and where we came from. I think one of the major projects of apartheid was making people believe they are one thing, and it was necessary to do that in order to have people buy into the idea of separation and separatism.”
“With Secret Keeper, I specifically used Xitsonga lyrics, because that’s a language growing up and a culture that has always been kind of sidelined. Yet reading up history and realizing that actually there’s no such thing really as that homogenous idea of Zulu people, or Sotho people, its different clans that were brought together for specific nation building purposes. And the idea that someone is less than you because they’re not from that group, you could actually be spitting on your own self and your own heritage.”
“If you look into your heritage specifically looking into our maternal ancestry you can find so many mixtures because there was a lot of intermarriage that happened and I think the same is true with race. Some intermarriage that happened that was against apartheid, some of it happened even before it was a thing that was made illegal. And we have this solid identity that is based on what we were told we are, and I felt like Secret Keeper was my discovering how connected I am to so many people just by knowing my own ancestry.”
The Jazz Fest
Come 3 and 4 May, 2024, jazz fans will flock to the Cape Town International Convention Centre for CTIJF 2024. What appeal does it hold for her?
“Well, I love the Jazz Festival. I’ve always enjoyed the lineup, so playing as an artist has always been very enjoyable off stage being able to meet musicians that I probably wouldn’t be able to meet. I think the way they always put the artists in the same hotel and put us in the same space gets us to kind of interact with musicians from all over who are on the lineup in a way that we wouldn’t be able to get at other festivals. I love performing at home – I really, really do, especially because my music is influenced by this place that I am in, South Africa. It’s a world class festival that I’m grateful to be a part of the lineup.”
To see Thandi Ntili play live, get your Cape Town International Jazz Festival tickets here.
Also read what Zoë Modiga has to say about the CTIJF here.
Who: Thandi Ntuli interview
What: Cape Town International Jazz Festival (CTIJF 2024)
Where: Cape Town International Convention Centre
When: 3 and 4 May 2024
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