Mashayabhuqe KaMamba - Hallelujah To The Gods

Music 8 years ago

Mashayabhuqe KaMamba - Hallelujah To The Gods

Mashayabhuqe KaMamba (born Ntsikelelo Christ’ Ndlovu) is the South African musician behind Digital Maskandi, a rising sub-genre that fuses traditional Zulu maskandi folk with electronic, trap-influenced sounds and vocals. On “Hallelujah To The Gods,” the Johannesburg-based artist pays his respects to a young fan who died at an initiation school in the Eastern Cape shortly after writing him a message saying how excited he was to begin the traditional Xhosa rite of passage to become a man. Produced by Mashayabhuqe’s Black Excellence Show collaborator MarazA, the track tells the stories of two young South African boys. On the first verse, “the song takes you on a journey of a young boy who is being teased at school for not being a man,” Mashayabhuqe says. “He has not gone to initiation school. He longs to go to the ‘mountains’ but he had recently read about all the boys who have not returned from the ceremonies due to infections and other related circumstances.” The second verse, he says, talks about “a young boy who never became a man, paralleled with a man who is struggling to keep peace in his relationship regardless of the love felt.” Listen to “Hallelujah To The Gods” below