Deep into her set at Best Video on Tuesday, Thabisa had the crowd wrapped around her finger. And she wasn’t even the headliner.
The South African-born musician, who has become a stalwart of the New Haven music scene, was at Best Video to support her compatriot, MXO, based in Johannesburg but currently doing a month-long U.S. tour.
“When I heard he was coming, I didn’t think twice,” Thabisa told the audience. “He’s the music I jog to every day. Well, almost every day.” She meant the jogging, not listening to MXO. “When I was in college,” she said, “I used to listen to him religiously. My ex-boyfriend introduced him to me. That was the best thing he ever did for me.”
Thabisa was drawn to MXO’s music in part because “he spoke like I speak — from the township.”
When she heard he was planning a U.S. tour, she reached out to him. “I told him, ‘you have to come to Connecticut.’” She said she would get him an audience and a band. And she did.
Before MXO’s set, Thabisa treated the rapt crowd to a set of her own songs, played with exquisite groove by a band comprised of Jim Lawson on bass, Lamar Smith on guitar, Sam Oliver on drum kit, Eric Rey on congas and udu, and Dylan McDonnell on flute and sax. Oliver in particular proved adept at incorporating electronic drum sounds into his kit, producing beats that varied in texture, got dirty when they needed to, and cleaned up when required. Rey, Lawson, and Smith created scintillating rhythms among them while McDonnell provided the direct line through the rich harmonies, and soloed tastily when asked. All this allowed Thabisa to light up the room with her bold voice and even bolder thoughts.
She set the stage for MXO, who announced himself as being from Wakanda, drawing a laugh from the crowd. But the comparison was apt. MXO was there to talk about strength and healing, about a world that could be. It began with his obvious chemistry with the band, still on stage from Thabisa’s set and now joined by Clifford Schloss, also on guitar. “I just met them yesterday and we gelled like that,” he said. “Synchronicity. Sit back, relax, and enjoy.”
MXO then proceeded to give the audience a taste of the talent that has allowed him to have a career spanning decades and over a dozen albums. His voice, powerful and commanding when needed and light as a feather when he wanted it to be, weaved in and out amid the rhythms the band created behind him. Before the crowd knew it, it was able to sing along with him in Xhosa, at his bidding. He was songwriter, singer, bandleader, and audience hype man all in one.
He thanked the audience for making him feel so welcome. “I’m here for a month,” he said, “but now I’m thinking, ‘I have a 10-year visa. Maybe I’ll extend my trip.”
“I promise I’ll be a good citizen,” he added. There was a serious undercurrent to his music, however. He dedicated one song to “all our mothers and sisters and daughters,” alluding to the violence they faced in South Africa. And his lyrics spoke of healing, in a joyful but also thoughtful way.
Those undercurrents were brought to the surface in a question-and-answer period after the music, in which Thabisa interviewed MXO about how he got his start in music and the state of South Africa now. They began by talking about the violence against women and children sweeping the country, including the recent brutal rape and murder of a college student in a post office by one of the office’s employees.
“There’s so much aggression, it’s unbearable,” Thabisa said. MXO agreed; as a husband and parent, he said, he entertained support for recent talk in South Africa of reinstating the death penalty. He knew, he said, that “I do not sound diplomatic.” But “I’m speaking as a parent. I feel the pain.”
That, however, drew the two musicians into a deeper conversation about why they play music and what role they thought it had in changing things. Both musicians were raised in townships, but MXO, being older than Thabisa, started playing music under apartheid. “Music used to be our solace with all the pain and suffering going around,” he said. “That’s when we felt love, when we got together to play.”
As a youth MXO was drawn to Bob Marley, to Miriam Makeba, to Hugh Masekela. “I was most excited by protest music,” he said. “I couldn’t ignore the calling. I didn’t really design to be an artist. It just called to me.” He recalled the rage many felt after the Soweto uprising and massacre in June 1976, and the way Mandela had preached forgiveness. That was the goal — one that, he felt, South Africa is still struggling toward now, even after the miraculously peaceful end to apartheid through the its Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“We feel robbed and brutalized by the system, even now,” he said. “We haven’t gotten over it — it’s not that simple. These things, they go over generations and generations.” It didn’t help that “our government is black people now, but we’re still treated like we’re still under apartheid.” The divisions between rich and poor, to MXO, were as stark as ever.
The role of music seemed as vital to MXO now as it did under apartheid. “The main purpose of music is to heal. It can’t be only us, but we do what we can.”
That led Thabisa to ask MXO about his own music, and the way it reflected the township speech she recognized in herself. “I use what I have from the background that I have,” MXO said. “I’m the son of a migrant and the working class. They don’t need fancy stuff. You have to speak directly, straight to the point.”
But MXO’s direct language was used to express a complex understand of the state he found South Africa in.
“Being politically free,” he said, after apartheid, “it doesn’t serve justice, or healing the heart and the soul…. We all have a part to play. It’s really important that we come together and show that it’s possible to heal.” For MXO, that involved working on oneself as much as working with others. “We’re always trying to teach people,” he said, caught up in the “rush” of trying to make ends meet. “They forget to have peace of mind.”
“It all starts in the mind and ends in the mind,” he said.
