Similar to Adele, South African musician Mandisi Dyantyis has released critically acclaimed albums without any features.
On Tuesday, which was also his birthday, Dyantyis revealed that he’ll be releasing his third album.
However, he didn’t want to share whether he would continue in the same modus operandi of going at it solo – except for featuring a band with which he always plays – nor did he reveal the album track list.
“Haai man, you’ll see… the 24th is here,” he says to The Citizen, laughing.
Titled Intlambululo, the album will be released on 24 October. He describes the music on Intlambululo as “simple in nature”.
Earlier this year, he told The Citizen that the album is layered.
“It’s Intlambululu, to cleanse and ukuhlabulula, to repent. And you look at those two words and what they mean… The next project really is zoning into the inner self, the things that make you wake up at night,” Dyantyis said at the time.
The release of the album is a timely one, as the country watches the Madlanga Commission daily, which stems from KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Police Commissioner Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s infamous July press conference.
“That’s all we need, we need like a week of pure cleansing and maybe restart you know. It really is inward-looking, in terms of what we contribute [to the country, to everything],” Dyantyis says.
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Why now?
The impromptu announcement of his album has excited his fans; however, he says he ignores people’s reactions despite being grateful for the excitement for his work.
“I don’t even notice to be honest, you know,” the Ungancami singer says.
“I don’t take these things for granted, but also they are not things I look for because there are two sides to this. For instance, you might announce an album and then people are not excited, what are you gonna do?
“I don’t look out for those things, I’m very boring in that sense.”
The last album Dyantyis released was 2021’s Cwaka.
When The Citizen asked why he decided to drop the album now, he echoed Fela Kuti’s sentiment that music is spiritual.
“Music has a spirit man and all I try and do is to gravitate towards that. I’ve been working on these songs for a very long time, these are old songs for me,” he shares.
He says the ditties first resided with him and then he later shared them with his band.
“But they [the songs] needed to connect with us, they needed to grow, the story needed to be clearer… ’cause you get them sometimes and the story is not clear for you in terms of why you’re getting this song,” the songwriter says.
Dyantyis says he has to go through a process of introducing himself to the song, in the same way the song was introduced to him.
“Because the writing process, getting the idea and writing the song is at the beginning, but then you have to live with the idea. You have to see how the idea shifts and changes you as an individual, and then take it to the people that you’ll be working with,” he says.
He says he and the band didn’t spend a lot of time recording the music on the upcoming album. “We don’t talk prematurely, we can’t be talking prematurely like we are God,” he says.
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