Finding Freedom
July 2011
Banner photo: Finding Freedom [© Dariush M./Shutterstock]
A Journey of Song
Tu Nokwe is a South African singer and actor and a member of one of South Africa's most famous musical families. Here she talks about her experiences of the liberating role of music.
Tu Nokwe in the mid-1970s engages a group of children as part of her Amajika ("change") youth cultural project, established during apartheid to build the self-esteem of young people
SGI Quarterly: What is your memory of apartheid; how would you characterize that experience?
Tu Nokwe: The memory when it comes back is of something crushing the mind. You feel you can't grow, in whatever way. It was painful. And it was dangerous, because it was a destructive tool not only to destroy what you owned but to destroy the seed of life itself. Because within life there's freedom to think, there's freedom to read the kind of books you want to read. You were not even allowed to keep certain books, you were not even allowed to speak a certain way, to write a song that indicated that you were telling people to stand tall. Any words that implied you giving a sense of power and control within your songs--they'd shut it down, they wouldn't play it, and you would be investigated.
It built a lot of fear within one's mind, which I know needs to be healed. Because when we have fears now as adults, you wonder, "Why do I doubt? I already have all this--why can't I just break away?" There are still things inside that we need to heal, things in our minds that come through the blood of our parents as energy, from what was modeled. Fearful parents--"Don't say this about a white person . . . Don't . . ." We had fearful parents. We had parents who were without hope.
It's a big lesson that even when on paper we have freedom in all countries, we must also practice to give that as a gift to each other. Because even just me judging the next person--not even in words but in my thoughts--I am taking away their freedom. I am already holding something from them, because everyone is allowed to make a mistake. We do that to each other at many levels.
And you ask yourself, why did it happen to me? If it happened to my parents and my forefathers, it means it happened to me, I have it in me. Why did I experience that, and how do I use the result of that experience to grow and be a better person, because there's a reason it happened, to give me that lesson? Let's give to each other that gift of freedom.
SGIQ: What role did music and the arts play under apartheid?
TN: What it used to do for me as a young person was to give me healing, at least for that moment. It used to give me a sense of power, for that moment, because there were ways that you could conceal what you mean with your words, but you could still be meaning it.
There was a sense of the gift of freedom through it. Because no matter how much a person would say, "Don't put such words in your lyrics, don't sing like this . . . Don't, don't," you could still do it and put your meaning inside of you. So that sense of power and freedom, it played a big role. And also it relieved some of the chains, because music has a way to sneak into your heart and kind of loosen you up, and make a person feel better and start to relax.
I watch people when I present my songs. I see how people start to sit back when I sing, and I can just see the vibrations going in and kind of easing something and bringing some understanding and pleasing. So I think it played a big role in changing the mind-sets and making those people, some of them, start to feel, "We actually are the ones who are chaining ourselves by controlling others like that. We are the ones who are afraid, what are we afraid of? Why don't we just allow people to be?"
Then slowly people were getting more empowered through international support, were getting power to make powerful songs, people like Miriam Makeba, Letta Mbulu, and Hugh Masekela, and Caiphus Semenya, and even American and other artists. They made music that spoke for us. Music was kind of like the voice that became a positive weapon to unchain everybody, even the oppressor.
SGIQ: And today, what do you see as the role of art and music?
TN: I find it is working boldly to bring material gain to people. But what I feel it should be doing is the healing. I have a very clear focus for my music, that it must serve as a healer. And somehow I will find a way whilst it heals for it to bring the gain, because I must earn a living.
Music is also healing me in the way that it helps me write my ideas down. I finished writing a book called Journey of My Soul, and inside that book I have systems, methods to self-manage, to live an orderly life. With money I can do many things, but to have that kind of freedom in my hands I must have built up a lot of responsibility within my life.
SGIQ: Your family is famous as activists and artists . . .
TN: The Nokwe name is known in music and culture and politics. My mother's family was a family of singers, and her father was an Ethiopian preacher who received the calling to preach after he already had his wives. All the wives were singers, and there was a huge choir of all his wives.
In the house where I was born, activists used to hide there during apartheid, musicians and actors used to park their buses there when they came to do shows, so my home was like a filling station of joy and politics. There were lawyers and people in hiding who would discuss heavy things. They used to pick up people there to sneak them out of the country into exile. So it was a center of a beautiful marriage of music, politics, art and culture.
SGIQ: How did you start in music, and how did that change things for you?
TN: I used to hear Mum singing all the time, because she used to do her vocal exercises in the morning and at night, as all singers should do. My obvious gift was in dancing and acting, but I couldn't sing, I was always off tune. I asked her if she could teach us to sing--me, my sister and my cousin--and she agreed. We called the group the Black Angels. That's how I started learning.
She'd teach us a song, give us three different harmonies, and whenever a harmony was given to me, I'd end up getting so excited and I'd move to another part. And then she'd hit me with her paper, and I'd cry, but carry on.
The group became recognized in the community. We'd sing at weddings. And then people were paying us money to perform at festivals. I was 14. That group was amazing--people screaming when we performed. We'd copy Quincy Jones lyrics, Ella Fitzgerald, The Pointer Sisters, Queen--all the difficult songs we would sing, because my mum had taught us very well. We'd copy the lyrics, and the words were wrong but people didn't care!
One of the musicians that used to come to our house was Bheki Mseleku, a great jazz pianist. He used to come and practice there. And I said to him one day, "You know I wish I could sing properly," because I still had that problem of shifting, but the others knew how to cover up. He said, "Uyaqina," which means you don't focus, you get too excited, you get carried away and you move from your point of focus. So he took me to the piano and made me practice singing a single scale against the piano for a week. And that changed my life.
And then I started to wish to have my own instrument, a guitar. I took two chairs--I was very innovative!--and I put six strings between them and looked at a guitar instruction book and copied how to hold chords; that was my way of practicing coordination. My dad thought I was crazy and he took me to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist said, "There's nothing wrong with her, just support her." My dad bought me a guitar, I applied the chords and composed my first song, and it came with lyrics, with melody and the chords I wanted, and that was it! I've never stopped.
SGIQ: You and Bheki later became romantically involved.
TN: I've started to feel that since Bheki left--he died two years ago--I don't think I have released him completely. Recently I've been thinking that I need to understand what it means to release him, because that is also taking back my freedom--what it means to forgive, to embrace the fact that when he died in London he died alone [of illness], and yet he had said he was going to die in my hands. It didn't happen that way.
He called me just before his last show at the Royal Albert Hall. He was panicking for that show. And I said, "Why? You, Bheki Mseleku, the great jazz musician, how can you panic?" And he said he was having trouble with one of his hands, he couldn't reach the notes to make the chords that he was used to. And I said, "Maybe it's about time you get a lesson from me!" I said, "You know what you said about the way I perform, uyaqina, I don't have focus? Well, sometimes that helps me because I am so free. I just give my gift, I share my gift the way it is, and you take it and you enjoy it. But I give with joy. So, when you do that show, don't be egoistic, don't be proud to try and get the chord that you want, but give people what you have. But you must first enjoy it." He said, "Thank you so much! That's just what I needed to hear."
But I am thinking now as we're talking, and I feel that my time with him is complete, because I was able to say something like that to him. That chord that you can't get, you don't have it. But the chord that you can get, that's what you have, so try and enjoy that first, and your audience is going to enjoy it. That's freedom, to have that understanding. I let go of what I don't have.
I spoke to the mother of his children in London and asked her, "Did you go to that show, how was it?" And I told her this story. She said, "Oh, my Lord! Thank you that you told him that, because it was the best show of his that I ever saw!" Close the chapter. Well done. Freedom.
