Exiled @ Home
- Lehlohonolo Peega
- Jul 27, 2020
- 3 min read
Ladies and gentlemen settle down, settle down, SETTLE DOWN! In tonight’s program, hai! Abuti ke wena, wena. Yah ke bua le wena. Can you behave! (long pause) please sit down! Please!
Thank you.
In tonight's rendition we have an advent in the South Afrikan music scene, a jazz connoisseur, performer and composer Thandi Ntuli presenting to us a very special program (https://www.deezer.com/en/artist/6865451). I am excited for you to witness this work and hope you will be moved by it as I was.
Thandi Ntuli - (Live at Jazzwerkstatt) Album Cover
In this performance, Miss Ntuli invites us to the deep corridors of her inner self to witness a personal story of love, displacement, otherness and internal yearning. Like any other artist, the art cuts tenfold to the narration.
In this art, Thandi Ntuli asks of us to wallow in the idea that how are you displaced from yourself, lonely with friends, hurt in love, othered as the majority and exiled at home? she precisely asks. She asks with much vigor and enthusiasm but quickly can’t help but notice that something is not quite right.
Something is not quite right with this whole corona situation, something is not quite right with our democracy, something is not quite right with this article and something is definitely not quite right with our society. Something is generally off with our sheer existence. I can't help but ask of someone to wake me up from this nightmare and tell me that the fact that I can’t help but feel that something is not quite right is a figment of my imagination. An imagination that I can’t claim as my own.
Oh Saviour can you not come and save me now?
Save me now from this dystopia of Setting the Tone for Exile (Live) that is so vivid in painting a picture of general despair that is clearly experienced by most in our country. Send not the frantic 12-tone look alike because it can’t help much in our displacement. After all, is it not Thandi Ntuli that explains that whilst writing this music she realised that “there are a lot of displaced people in this society” and that this was true for most from the conversations she was having?
Such displacement we rebuke, we decree and say: Oh lost strings of New Way consume us not for we are just but confused. We are confused at how “Ill-equipped, we find ourselves in a boxing ring ... and this has led to being ravaged and Left wounded by the blows of men who couldn't love” how could they? How could they when “This integration is all for show” and all those who “talk of freedom, what do they know?” As for me I see a Rainbow with coloured soil.
We invoke the spirit of Ngai to manifest itself in the ever constant and pulsating beat of Kasiva Mutua’s drumming, we beg that you secure us Oh great One.
In our request we are also aware that all is not lost as the piano vamp on the B note (Setting the Tone for Exile - Live) brings much hope and sense of security to our madness. It is this madness that we hope to settle as this vamp tries to do for this song.
We pray for a second chance to try and be decent (we promise we will be) as Ntuli’s benediction to once again try her artistic vision intended in Exiled but manifested in Thandi Ntuli - (Live at Jazzwerkstatt) was granted.
Thandi Ntuli performing
In deep despair we ask, are we not of this world? Are we children of a lesser God?
In crafting a sense of normalcy of Portal (Live), we declare that we will not be consumed by this despair, we reject this displacement and we decree that Black is Beautiful (invoking Bantu Biko) and indeed we are.
With these words, I present to you thee Thandi Ntuli.
Enjoy !!!
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