A Prayer for Humanity: Vusi Mahlasela performs at St. Andrew’s
Posted February 6, 2010
South African singer-songwriter and poet-activist Vusi Mahlasela came to St. Andrew’s on Thursday, February 4, and his visit made a deep and lasting impression on the community. Known in Africa simply as “The Voice,” Vusi is an iconic figure, a man who inspired the anti-apartheid movement with his songs of truth and protest. His music sounded the death knell of apartheid when he performed at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration in 1994, and he is now an ambassador to Mandela’s 46664 Foundation, a campaign to help raise global awareness of Aids/HIV.
Vusi's visit came about through a St. Andrew's alumnus, Christopher Tetzeli '86, who has been in the music industry since graduating from college. While living in Charlottesville in the early 1990s, Chris met the then up-and-coming artist Dave Matthews, and soon found himself as one of the first employees of the band’s management company. In early 2000, Chris, along with Dave Matthews and other members of Dave’s management company, founded ATO records, which Chris ran for several years. Upon founding ATO, Dave Matthews made it clear that one of the first artists he wanted to sign was his good friend and fellow South African Vusi Mahlasela. ATO has since worked with Vusi for several years, and Chris now serves as his manager. At a meeting in Denver this fall with Taylor Cameron '90, when Chris learned about Engelhard Hall, he immediately said that he wanted to introduce Vusi to the St. Andrew's community.
Students from John Austin’s Global Studies class and Wilson Everhart’s 20th Century History class gathered in the Gahagan room on Thursday morning to talk with Vusi, who shared his experience with the anti-apartheid movement as well as talking about the current situation in South Africa. He visited with Gary Harney’s Choral Scholars in the afternoon. Fellow South African Joleen Hyde prepared a special South African meal in honor of Vusi’s visit, and the whole community enjoyed her cooking in the dining hall in the evening. After dinner, over 40 students and teachers joined Vusi in the faculty lounge, eager to hear more of his wisdom and experience. His nickname is well-earned; all who heard him speak or sing were struck by the eloquence and poetry of his words.
The centerpiece of Vusi’s visit was his concert during school meeting. His performance was electrifying. Engelhard was packed; students, faculty and staff members stood spellbound. Alone with his guitar, Vusi sang his experience, his gorgeous, sorrowful and ecstatic voice filling the hall. “This is my prayer for humanity,” were the first words he sang, and his whole performance was a prayer, an appeal for commemoration, grief, victory and celebration. He sang about death, about corpses filling the ground. He sang about brutality, about a pregnant woman being beaten by the police. He sang about prison, sharing a poem that one of his inmates wrote on a piece of toilet paper. But he also sang about hope, about community, about the power of forgiveness. Pausing between songs, he spoke of his heroes, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Ghandi: “These are the grandfathers of humanity, who taught the wisdom of forgiveness,” he said. “If you don’t forgive, you are the one who suffers. Forgiveness will make you free.”
Vusi speaks 17 languages. Some of his lyrics were in English, others in Zulu and other South African languages, but the power of his message was crystal clear to all who heard. Cameron MacDonald ’11 spoke for the whole community when he told Vusi, “Listening to your music today was an intense emotional experience for me; it moved me in a way that I don’t think I have ever experienced with any music or art. Even though half of the songs were in a language that I have never heard before, I felt the message that they were conveying.”
Surrounded by rapt students in the faculty lounge that evening, Vusi told his story. He grew up in Mamelodi Township, a vibrant artist community which he still calls home. His childhood was filled with music: He sang in the choir at school and when he was about eight years old he built his first guitar out of an old cooking oil can, wood, and fishing wire for strings. “I didn’t know there were any injustices or imbalances in my country,” he recalls. Everything changed in June 1976, the month of the Soweto uprisings. “All of a sudden I started asking questions – what is really going on in my country?” Vusi began working with youth organizations to protest the Apartheid regime, and he joined The Ancestors of Africa, a poetry group, and began reading his poems at night vigils, funerals and anti-apartheid marches. His activism triggered a long period of police harassment. Every morning, he had to sign in at the police station before and after school; he had to sign in at church every Sunday, and before any family trip out of the township. He learned to memorize his poems and songs, which police would routinely confiscate.
Despite the pain and bloodshed he witnessed, Vusi still celebrates the triumph of the end of apartheid and believes in Mandela’s vision of Truth and Reconciliation. “We negotiated with the enemy, and I think that is the most powerful thing. Of course people died; a price had to be paid for our freedom. But we followed our leaders in non-violent protests, and that is how we made our politicians listen.”
Vusi’s career has brought him around the world and he has collaborated with many amazing artists, among them Paul Simon, Dave Matthews and Bela Fleck. One student wanted to know what he considered his happiest moment. He told the story of meeting one of his heroes, Nelson Mandela, and being asked to serve as an ambassador for his 46664 Foundation. “I told him I was having a concert in Pretoria a few days later, and he said he would come to the show. And he did come! That really knocked me down,” Vusi laughed.
“What inspires you to create your music?” asked another student. “Music is the only thing that makes me feel that I can really live, and say what I have to say,” Vusi answered. “I believe my songs are like a controlled fire burning; I know that I have to use the gift I have been given in the right way. When I sing I am telling a story, and I have to tell it because it is true. There are thorns in life that make us bleed – fear, jealousy, anger, oppression – and in my music I am singing about these thorns.”
Another student wanted to know where Vusi found the courage to speak and sing his message against such powerful opposition. “The truth will set you free,” he said with a smile, somehow restoring the force and wisdom of this maxim. “When I am singing, I am telling the truth, and I know I have nothing to fear. Whatever the consequences of what I say, I can let it be.”
Vusi left the group of students with an affirmation of courage and moral truth: “It’s really sad that people hurt each other, but in the end, we are all people and we have to honor each other. It’s only us. If we want to see something change, it starts here.”