A Global Musical Expedition by a Legend in the Making
by Mohlomi Maubane
It was once said that you can’t build castles in the sky, and judging by the journey he has travelled thus far, poet and songwriter Tumi Molekane has laid a solid foundation for a voyage of which the destination has the potential to be unparalleled.
Born Boitumelo Molekane 35 years ago in Mogorogo, Tanzania, his country of birth was not a choice. His parents – Ellen Molekane and Mandla Msibi – were forced to leave South Africa because they were labelled terrorists by the government of the day. Political activism during apartheid is often romanticised, and yet Tumi’s father died when Tumi was just nine months old, poisoned by the oppressors who were among those he was striving to liberate. It is a loss Tumi narrates dispassionately, assumingly not seeking to play the son-of-a-martyr protagonist. His evolution, however, is a story worth telling on its own.
“My mom and I lived all over the continent, always moving around. The enduring memory of being in exile is that in all that travelling, all we were striving for was to return home,” he says as he sits across from me at a restaurant in Newtown, Johannesburg. The nonchalance with which he recounts this background betrays the displacement it caused.
For example, when asked about his formal education, the only definite answer is the first school he attended: Two Tops in Lusaka, Zambia. All else is skidded over with a casualness that is betrayed by an aura that implies: “I don’t want to go there.” By 1991, Tumi and his mother were back in South Africa, staying in Central West Jabavu, Soweto. “It was difficult to acclimatise. I was called names, **kwerekwere** (foreigner), and so forth. The family did all they could to help me assimilate, but you don’t spend most of your time with family. You are either at school or on the street.” It was only when they moved to Berea in inner city Joburg that Tumi eventually adapted. “Hip-hop helped a lot. I met this guy called Zweli Badela. Initially it was about lending each other CDs, and it grew organically from there to us forming our own crew, Database. Zweli was an IT guy, and his reasoning was that we are keepers of information, hence the name.” In the midst of their metamorphosis, Zweli tragically lost his father and had to temporarily relocate to the Eastern Cape. When he returned to Johannesburg, the duo could not rekindle the chemistry they once had. Tumi then gravitated to poetry, no doubt inspired by Joburg’s burgeoning underground spoken word scene.
A chance meeting at a gig in Bassline with a collective called 340 ml led to the formation of Tumi and the Volume. The Mozambican crew were the resident band at the venue, and the collaboration between the two acts was to lead to world tours. “We rocked at Oppikoppi and the organisers liked our stuff and organised for us to perform in Norway at the Quartz Festival with Coldplay, Massive Attack, The Roots… It was the coolest thing. It was in Norway that we realised that the world is our oyster, South Africa was not big enough.”Tumi and the Volume went on to rock crowds around the world. From parties at the South African Embassy in London and Roman Abramovich’s brother’s party on a private island in Greece, to a six-month tour of Canada, global superstardom seemed to be in their reach.
“Look, we were learning as we went. It was a first experience for everybody, so it’s only through the benefit of hindsight that we can say perhaps we could have done things this way or that way.” Tumi and the Volume recorded three albums: **Live at the Bassline**; **Tumi and the Volume** and **Pick a Dream**. In the midst of all that, Tumi also released two solo albums, while 340 ml also produced albums on their own. The collective was supposed to start recording a fourth album in January 2013, but it was not in them anymore. “We had run a good race. The album title was there, everything was set, but when we asked each other, no one felt like doing this anymore, so we parted ways.”
Tumi now runs his own record label, Motif Records, and has a crystal clear vision of where he wants to go. “I do music for everyone; I don’t want to be confined to the ‘other’ anymore. I am tired of being stereotyped as the alternative act or the intellectual act. Bob Marley rocked the whole world without having to compromise himself or his style. That is where I am looking at going”.
His talent undisputed, and with his obligatory dues paid, it’s a goal that is very much within his grasp, considering the journey he has travelled thus far.
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