Themba Mkhize's isicathamiya musical Nightsong plays its final weekend at the State Theatre

Ingoma-busuku / Nightsong, Themba Mkhize's musical about a young pianist pulled between Western classical music and isicathamiya, plays its final shows at the South African State Theatre in Pretoria this weekend. The run in the Drama Theatre ends on Sunday, 1 November.

Mkhize, the veteran jazz pianist and composer, directs the production and is its musical director. Dr Mxolisi Norman co-directs. Oscar Buthelezi choreographs. The show that closes on Sunday is the one those three names are attached to, in a theatre the State Theatre's own listing places in the Drama Theatre.

The story

Nightsong is set in Durban. Jabulani, called Jabu, is a gifted teenage musician who keeps hearing songs in his sleep, dreams that carry ancestral voices, as the State Theatre describes them. His mother, Nomasonto, raises him in Berea, and a retired concert pianist, Mrs Smith, trains him in classical music. He finds himself drawn instead to isicathamiya and to the story of his absent father, Stitch, a respected isicathamiya singer.

The search takes Jabu between Berea, Dalton Hostel and Inanda. The production draws on the all-night isicathamiya gatherings of the apartheid years. That is where the title comes from. The form was once known as ingoma ebusuku, night song.

The State Theatre says the cast includes isicathamiya singers working with a live band and an ensemble. The show runs as two 45-minute sets, is open to all ages, and is booked through Webtickets and the State Theatre box office. Two short sets, not one long act, is the shape the theatre has published. Anyone going this weekend is buying that shape, in that room, through those two box offices.

Years in the making

Mkhize, who was born in KwaZulu-Natal and started his professional career with the band Sakhile in 1981, told Sowetan that the musical took several years to develop. It grew out of his own studies.

I did my Master's research on the Mtubatuba Brothers, exploring whether isicathamiya could be transcribed and notated. I went back to my studies later in life and graduated at the age of 64.

Casting was hard, he said, because the parts need performers who can cross between the two traditions.

Finding a classical pianist who can also act and sing is very difficult.

He told Sowetan he wants the show to point young people towards their own musical heritage, and he worries that so little traditional South African music is heard on radio. The interview is the source of both worries. This piece does not add a third.

What closes on Sunday

He came to the production fresh from playing the Joy of Jazz festival in September with his son, the pianist Afrika Mkhize. That festival set is context for the man directing the musical. It is not a claim that Afrika Mkhize is in the State Theatre cast. The State Theatre listing names the director, the co-director and the choreographer. It describes singers, a live band and an ensemble. It does not publish a principal-cast list in the material this piece used.

The run itself is dated. It opened on 16 October and ends on 1 November. After Sunday the Drama Theatre date is over. The research Mkhize described, the Mtubatuba Brothers and a master's completed at 64, is the origin he gave Sowetan. The show this weekend is the production that came out of it.

Sources: the South African State Theatre press listing, Mkhize's interview with Sowetan, and 702. The Sowetan quotes above were re-checked against that interview. The photograph is a 2013 Wikimedia Commons image of the State Theatre, released under CC0. A Sowetan portrait of Mkhize was too soft to use.