Photo credit: Justice Mukheli
Soweto-based 4 piece Urban Village have announced their signing to faultless Parisian imprint Nø Førmat!, alongside the release of their debut single, ‘Sakhisizwe’. The first track lifted from Urban Village’s debut album – due in 2020 – the infectious ‘Sakhisizwe’ arrives just ahead of a New Year’s Eve appearance from the band at Afropunk Johannesburg (with the likes of Nao, Solange and Miguel also on this year’s line up). ‘Sakhisizwe’ is available to stream via all DSPs from here, alongside a live performance video shot in Paris during Nø Førmat!’s 15th anniversary celebrations – watch that from here.
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An unabashedly joyous tune, ‘Sakhisizwe’ – whose title translates as ‘To Build A Nation’ – is buoyed along by contagious Zulu guitar riffs, a melodious flute that cuts across the rhythm, and lyrics of hope sung both in Zulu and in English. With feet firmly in the traditions of South African music and a keen eye on the future, Urban Village know how to navigate their country’s vast repository of rhythms, all the better to explore new dimensions. The incantatory tones of singer Tubatsi Mpho Moloi lights up the band’s charismatic songs with multiple colours – sometimes powerful, sometimes gentle, always airborne. The folk guitar of Lerato Lichaba, deeply anchored in the Zulu world, serves as the bedrock of the band’s song-writing, whilst cello, flute and loops of ‘sanza’ invite themselves in, with all their poetry, to give Urban Village their unique sound.
The new alternative voice of Soweto, in ‘Sakhisizwe’ Urban Village bring a unifying message of great resonance in today’s South Africa, where a fear of the other has far from disappeared. Here, the next generation consult with ‘the ancients’ to rediscover a coherence, to trace a new and luminous path forwards and to build a new nation together.
LIVE
29 December NORTHERN DRAKENSBERG Smoking Dragon Festival
31 December JOHANNESBURG Afropunk
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