Page 13 - INSIDE ACCESS JULY 21 4TH EDITION

How do you intend to be- come more mainstream? And can you do so without diluting your sound?
Becoming mainstream is not an intention. I defne mainstream as being visible. And it is possible to be visible and authentic. Today, with
so many options for platforms on which you can host your music, one sound isn’t considered as authentic anymore. There’s room for diversity. And more importantly, there’s an audience for it.
Are there any misconcep- tions people have about jazz or your music?
Why is that?
There are so many. A lot of people think it’s for old or mature people. But it’s actually for everybody. Ironically, the people who watch me perform the most, are my age. I think this is linked to the kind of marketing done around jazz music.
Location: Botho Project Space
Oftentimes, when jazz is portrayed, it’s shown to belong to a certain era only. Meanwhile, that’s not true.
If there is one thing
you want your music to achieve what would it be?
I write my music from an intro- spective place and from a personal lens. I want it to make people look at themselves and examine some of the things they’ve internalized
as life has progressed. But most importantly, I hope people once having looked inside themselves, act positively based on what they’ve seen.
Name one global stage you’d love to play on.
This is hard to answer. But what I will say is that I’d love to play for a Nige- rian audience again. I’ve performed at Calabar Jazz Festival before and would love to do that again. Nigeri- ans are welcoming and are such a generous audience.
Tell us briefly about your new collaborative album?.
It’s an album produced by myself and a brother called Sia Ntembu under a British label. It’s a compila- tion of young jazz scenes around the world, including the vibrant jazz scene in Melbourne. It’s an eight track album. Though it’s inclusive, and no song is like the other, it doesn’t represent the entire jazz scene, simply because there’s just so much going on in it. However, it’s a wonderful introduction.
What does your song - iledi ? mean to you?
This is a song about Africans going back to our ancestral knowledge and embracing the wisdom it has to offer. There’s been so much we’ve missed out on simply because, for years, we’ve been told that our tra- ditions are bad and that our culture is inferior.
Thandi Ntuli was born in one of South Africa’s largest townships, Soshanguve, on the 10th September 1987 and has Bachelor of Music in Jazz Performance from The University of Cape Town. Her debut album The Offering, was released in 2014 and received a nomination for “Best Urban Jazz” in 2015 from MetroFM. Her compositions draw from a wide array of infuences, of which she attributes to the collaborative culture of jazz and that are also refective of the mix of South African and American jazz as well as traditional African music, on which she grew up.
PAGE 13 INSIDE ACCESS | JULY 2021 4TH EDITION