The Zoe Modiga Innerview

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By the time we’ve shuffled past a pack of patrons and plonked ourselves into our seats, Zoë Modiga is already on stage. I ask my friend, who was saving our seats way ahead of showtime, if what Zoë is singing now is her first song. 

She shakes her head no, her eyes looking sorry for me. 

I’m not late to the show. Promise. Coffee at The Artistry can take a long time from order to in-hand.

I am, however, late to this album. Released on 26 April 2024, nomthandazo is Zoë’s third solo album and one I steered clear of for fear of deeply experiencing new music that could potentially propel me to want to write publicly again.

But watching her perform the new songs, revealing layers of herself as she shed the boxy blazer and the wide brim hat to show Benny and Betties, I am reminded it can be safe to be seen again. That fear can be swapped for power, love and a sound mind. At the end of the show, I drive home listening to nomthandazo and it stays in my streaming service library for weeks after. 

Let Us Pray

Twenty20 was a pivotal year for pretty much all of us and for Zoë, it launched a new vision following her South African Music Award-winning offering, Inganekwane (2020) and her debut, Yellow: The Novel (2019). It all started with the 13th track off nomthandazo, a pensive petition called imithandazo yethu.

“I’d played the first two chords of one of my other compositions called Dandelion, which is off Yellow: The Novel,” she tells me weeks after I saw her perform. “I was just playing around with Logic [audio software] and trying to create. It wasn’t so much like a ok-we’re-writing-a-song kind of thing.”

“I did a few series of chords for that song and that messaging seemed to be the thing that came out: ‘Nkosi lalela imithandazo yethu’. Probably because of this communal experience the entire world was having [during the pandemic] — which does not happen, in general!”

“I wanted the song to sound like what you imagine when women pray and you can’t quite make out what they’re saying but there’s something happening and you’re in the moment and feeling the energy of it and it’s almost as though you can hear the prayers, just in a different way. That’s what I was hoping to get out of that.”

What followed this initial foray is an 18-track album exploring faith and family ties over a sonic bed that is part soul, jazz, r&b and straight-up vocal flex! You hear it in the abundant vocal stacking, in the whistling that lends itself to bird sounds, in her multi-instrumentalist approach that sees her use voice and play keys, synths, guitars and clarinet to compose — all before inviting collaborators. 

“A whole lot of things were happening before I asked Banda (of the BandaBanda Agency) to co-produce with me so he could add a rhythmic thing,” she recalls. “Without Banda’s contribution, this would’ve just sounded like a meditation album!”

Meditation, reflection, prayer and affirmations are core themes of the music. The affirmations are central to uyakhazimula — part of which is now a popular TikTok sound, amassing almost 3000 videos on the platform — where Zoë shines her big little light.

She tells me “uyakhazimula was my acknowledgement to myself. Because the album came from a meditative space, the original idea of that song was to take on the idea of affirmations — I am strong, I am wise, I am intelligent — I wanted a song that has that. Something people can repeat to themselves so that it’s engineered within them that they are that.”

Having the audience in mind also shows up on amen — which is literally her singing just one word: amen. “I wanted to sing this universal word so that people could make meaning of it for themselves without me needing to dictate what [I’m saying] amen to,” she explains.

“But,” she continues, “at the same time, if I’m being very honest, I was also like: we’re doing away with words so why not just have one word in a song? I was interested and curious. The audacity of that! How dare you have a whole song with just one word in it? I’ve never seen or experienced that.”

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Though the rest of the album does feature more words in verses and choruses, there was an intentional move towards less is more lyrically. “It was scary because from Yellow: The Novel to Inganekwane was a pulling away of words. I think I did it even more with this album,” she says then laughs mischievously.

“As a person who calls themselves a singer, a songwriter, a performer, a composer, I did feel nervous about doing that because I didn’t want it to come across as lazy. But the place it did come from was the feeling of being in these sacred spaces and how repetitive things become impactful.”

“I’ve been exposed to such a wide range of spiritual practices. Being born into a family that is Roman Catholic and the repetition you hear abomama saying in that space, and going into a charismatic church and how there’s those choruses [repeated] and African spirituality and seeing the power of repetition in that. I was coming from wanting to see what a meditative spiritual practice would look like from my perspective. I realised that in my trying to understand my Creator, the God inside me and inside everyone else that I try to respect in this walk of life, I realised there aren’t words for everything. I found that the words would take away because words are descriptors and sometimes there aren’t words to describe certain things and I wanted that to come across. That this is so big that there is not much that can be said in words about it.”

The Himbook

Zoë does push herself with finding the words, though — when it comes to writing about romantic love. She is a part of the underappreciated band, Seba Kaapstad, and says “Manana (who is both part of the band and a solo artist too) is an incredible person to write love songs with but I find, in my own capacity, love is a very challenging topic to write songs about.”

“Maybe that’s why I always write about self-love. I find romantic love to be a challenging topic because I always feel like I want to write about it honestly and as much as I am inspired by people who give us the cotton candy version of love, my experience of it has been so different.”

The result is the elegant bengemanzi, a song ripe for a riff-and-run challenge. At her live show, she tells the audience it’s her attempt at a 90s r&b song and, later, she tells me bengemanzi shows “relationships are a part of the experience of womanhood. This album was inspired by matriarchy and I wanted to find ways to humanise the experience of what womanhood comes with. So this song was definitely the H-I-M-book and was inspired by a real experience of love and a love that you want to build and work on.”

Him aside, the most central figure to this album is her. Her as in Zoë’s grandmother, whose name was Nomthandazo. Her as in Zoë herself, who is named after her grandmother. Her as in the listener beating her chest with affirmations. Her, also, as in the roll call of names that are both nouns and verbs to describe the best qualities of women and that are sung with recognition and reverence in a breathtaking crescendo, as gratitude, towards the end of the album’s title track. 

The Nguni names range from Nomathamsanqa to Nomusa to Nothando and… Nthabiseng? 

Zoë howls with laughter when I tell her I wasn’t expecting the names to include just one name that doesn’t follow the Nguni pattern. 

“That’s my mother’s name,” she exclaims through laughter. “Her name is Nthabiseng and I wanted to mention her just before the grand Nomthandazo, who is my grandmother. Also, I like the rub in that — in having these Nguni names and then including her as well. Inasmuch as it’s my mom’s name, I never want people to lose sight that my identity is not just one thing. I wanted to get into more languages and acknowledge my Tswana and Sotho sides. I do, though, love that including Nthabiseng within those names makes people go: ‘Girl… huh?’”

Songs like mokete and mokete o mong precede Zoë’s desire “to explore singing in more languages and finding a way to organically introduce people to that aspect of my music” in the future. But in the present, the artist is content with the version of herself she has given us. 

I ask her if, due to the eponymous nature of the work, she feels like she’s presenting her most authentic self now. “Each album has been as honest as it can possibly be and it was the real me that I was at the time that the album was made,” she shares. “But unomthandazo is the core me, in the sense that it is a sneak peek into the heartbeat of who I am.”

“Inganekwane was socio-political opinions, and black bodies and people of colour being loved on. The first album was more like self-realisation and affirming that space. This album is the core of where I get the things that I share with people. It’s my reference, my true north being shared with people.”

Thank God she shares with us. May we all be brave enough to share too. 

Amen.

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