If we can hail Miriam Makeba as the vocalist of her generation who brilliantly embraced (and actually shaped) global music sounds, and Sathima Bea Benjamin as the experimenter who entranced the modern jazz scene, then Ncediwe Sylvia Mdunyelwa, who died on August 25, joins that pantheon of late, great South African singers as the consummate vocal classicist.
At the core of her music was a fierce insistence on respect for the tradition – of the international greats such as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, and of isiXhosa music – and for the song.
Langa-born Mdunyelwa grew up in those traditions. Her uncle, Aspro Sipoyo, led close-harmony vocal group The Semitones, her sister was a jazz singer, and her home became a meeting-place for musicians including bassist Victor Ntoni; family gatherings sounded loud with religious songs, and Ella, Sarah and Carmen Macrae were all regulars on the record-player. Singing along, the young Nce, became a singer even before she had articulated the ambition to be one.
Her first employment was at Cape Town’s Space Theatre as a receptionist, but there she both grew her experience as a vocalist, and developed a formidable acting career. Sunday afternoon jazz sessions at the theatre brought her into contact with pianist Merton Barrow (credited by many Cape Town jazz players as unstinting with advice and guidance) and drummer Maurice Gawronsky, and by her early 20s she was the regular vocalist with the regular band there, the Victor Ntoni Sextet, as well as guesting with other Cape Town jazz stars including the Ngcukana Brothers, Mankunku Ngozi and many more. But she was also drawn into some of the independent theatre productions that found a stage at the Space. This experience led to her talent being noticed and to later appearances in feature films including Born to Win and Freedom Road.
Her passion to pass on all this skill and knowledge to younger generations led her into community arts education – and that, in turn, led to a 1990 Canada trip at the head of a youth group, and eventually to a bursary for study at UCLA. After that, tours, including to the Berlin Jazz Festival and to Colombia in Latin America (where she was awarded for her community work in Cape Town), followed.
Mdunyelwa released two albums, the 1998 Africa Diva, recorded live at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda (then Grahamstown), and the 2000 studio recording Ingoma, on the international Blue Note jazz label. African Diva is still available on Spotify, but, as she told jazz writer Warren Ludski a couple of years back, “I was asked if I got royalties from Spotify. I got nothing from Spotify. I didn’t even know about Spotify.” (https://warrenludskimusicscene.com/interviews-3/who-is-the-local-diva-whos-done-it-all-sylvia-mdunyelwa-of-course/ ). Ingoma doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. A reissue is long overdue – ideally through a label that will make sure Mdunyelwa’s estate and legacy Trust actually do see some benefit.
The singer continued to perform in and around Cape Town, worked as a jazz broadaster at P4 and served on the board of Fine Music Radio. But increasingly her passion was for community education and activism: she served on her local street committee in Langa, and composed the impassioned anthem Where are the Children Now? to draw attention to the situation of Cape Town’s young people, caught in the crossfire of poverty, family insecurity and crime.
Check out the playlist below and you’ll hear what a powerful singer Mdunyelwa was. As I wrote at the start: she was a classicist of South African jazz song. Melody came first; lyrics were delivered with crystal clarity and emotional force; swing centered her versions of American classics (listen to Easy Street), but there was always a compelling subtext of respect for the Xhosa language and that community’s musicality. It all comes together beautifully on her rendition of Lakutshon’iLanga, which, for many people, remains the best ever.
Mdunyelwa was grittily realistic about the kind of support musicians could expect in South Africa. She told Ludski “Forget about government. They will promise you something and you’ll be dead before you get anything. When you die as a legend or diva or icon, they will come and talk at your graveside. I don’t want that.”
Nevertheless, I hope she receives multiple official tributes, accompanied by concrete support to ensure her legacy as a guardian of and activist-educator about the South African jazz tradition, however belated it all may now be. Lala Ngoxolo.
A SYLVIA MDUNYELWA PLAYLIST
1993, Germany: Easy Street
1998: Mbube from African Diva
2007 with George Werner and Duke Ngcukana: an isiXhosa Stormy Weather
2012: Lakutshon’ilanga
2017 at the Errol Dyers Memorial
Talking about her cultural development work on HeartFM:
2022 with McCoy Mrubata: Thula
2023 at Guga S’Thebe: Where Are the Children Now?
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