HEAT Festival Day 2: Mfazwe Ya Mwezi & MANA
The second night of HEAT ushered in a tranquil femininity underscored by grooves wherein one could find some rest.
To be completely honest, the artists of the night I had only heard of (I’d maybe seen a reel or two). I heard good things, but their presence - their demanding of your attention - felt like a seduction that we in the room could not resist.
Photography by Vuyo Polson, courtesy of POLE Studios
“Molweni, molweni, molweni…”
Mfazwe Ya Mwezi (M.Y.M), true to their name, opened the night as a singular voice orbiting us, the people, the Earth - pulling and pushing us in ways that we slowly became aware of throughout the night. The trio, usually performing as a four-piece, moved with a cosmic momentum in both sound and body. Like Luna, standing as a remnant of the war between Gaia and Theia - the known and the unknown - M.Y.M pulled us across the limiting threshold within our mind.
The night saw @_hlombe, @lilithanaomigalada and @_.ntsumi each holding their voices in harmony with the instruments they were playing. These three together created harmonious rhythms that didn’t take any time in getting people to move along. @lilithanaomigalada held down a steady rhythm on the djembe in which @_.ntsumi could dance around on the keys with @_hlombe floating on top of that with the mbira.
Photography by Luke Swanepoel
There was no hierarchy to how they occupied the stage, no single point the eye was pulled toward. You'd find yourself watching Ntsumi's hands on the keys, then drift to Lilithalela's hands moving with the djembe, then land back on Hlombe, realising the mbira had been threading through the whole thing without announcing itself. These elements felt like the stars you see only when you don’t focus on them.
Hlombe led the vocals, but did not assume her voice being the primary. It felt as though all three were speaking from a point of ancestral and platonic unity while reflecting on their own experiences. By the time they closed, it felt as though we in the room had all entered our own, wholly new orbit.
“If we dream through our music, it often comes true.”
If M.Y.M carried us across the threshold, MANA was the one who cast the spell to keep us there. Opening with Dots Passing, performed by Vuyo Nkasawe on the keys and the first track of her debut EP Orb, she commanded - with eyes closed, hands folded - the room into a moment of stillness. Here we understood how she carved MANA out of Mariana. In this moment we felt the primal life force that moves every living being towards the acceptance of our oneness. Slowly, just as the Kundalini rises, she awoke the rest of the band. With Khaya Mthembu Salter on the six-string, Luke Verrezen on the bass and Matthew Keswell on drums, the groove continued on, and we in the room could not help but to surrender.
The languid flow of Dots Passing turned into a cadence reminiscent of Latin rhythms, and the whole room seemed to shift its weight from one foot to the other in agreement. Salter's guitar work stayed conversational rather than showy, filling in the spaces MANA's voice left open rather than trying to fill them. Verrezen and Keswell held the bottom end loose enough that the songs could breathe, but tight enough that you never lost the thread. The trust they had in one another, and especially in MANA, we all could feel.
As MANA began to sway, so did the audience. And as it always does, the communication between audience and performer felt like an ebb and flow; Prana our language, moving through us and connecting us. The spell of capture turned into a spell of caress - feeling of calm swept over the room as we felt safe stepping over in the unknown. As MANA shared the deepest parts of herself, we could see the same reflected in us.
By the time the last note settled, it was hard to remember the room as anything other than what it had become — a space held open by power musicians who, despite arriving from different sonic worlds, all seemed less interested in performing at us than inviting us somewhere quieter. M.Y.M set us in our orbit; MANA gave us gravity. Between the two, the second night of HEAT didn't so much end as exhale, leaving the room a bit more open than it found us.
