It only takes Nakhane about thirty seconds to drop something weirdly profound.
“I’m in Lisbon at the moment. I wanted to be lonely and write some songs, and Lisbon’s beautiful in a post-grandeur, dilapidated, cracking sort of way. There’s something sad about it. Although coming from a country once colonised by Portugal, I don’t know how sad I can be.”
Chatting with Nakhane Touré, who performs as Nakhane, is like interviewing a haiku – every so often he’ll toss off something elliptical and mysterious, before geeking out on historical references or plucking a raw nerve. Right now, at 30 years old, he’s one of the most interesting, diverse and talked-about artists alive: a published author, award-winning actor, musician and singer who just appeared on The New York Times’ list of 10 Artists to Watch in 2019. He’s also one of the headline acts at this year’s Mona Foma.
So why all the hype? Cynics might say it’s fuelled by controversy. Nakhane recently starred in John Trengove’s indie flick, The Wound, a brutal look at homosexuality in South Africa’s conservative Xhosa community (the country’s second largest ethnic population). The role won Nakhane a Best Actor award at the Durban International Film Festival, but it also sparked months of protests along the Eastern Cape, not to mention online death threats. It’s part of the reason he recently put down roots in London (before ditching London for Lisbon) – he’s tired of being trotted out as some crusading LGBTIQ+ poster child.
“To be honest, I wish more journalists would ask me about the actual music, rather than the death threats or whether I suck dick or not,” he says. “It feels like they’re always fishing for a headline.”
Music fans put Nakhane’s dazzling rise down to something much simpler than clickbait headlines: sheer, freaky, triple-distilled talent. His second album, You Will Not Die, dropped in 2018 to gushing five-star reviews. It’s a haunting, heart-trembling, fuck-them-all scorcher of a record, picked out in creamy synth chords, melancholy strings and the occasional mbira twang.
“What I wanted was to make an album that was sumptuous and sexy,” Nakhane says. “I wanted it to be hopeful, sensual and rococo. I remember when we were making it in the studio, I said to my producer I want to make a very ‘rococo’ album. I wanted it to sound like curly cheese, frilly and beautiful and baroque, because that’s where I come from. The churches are very big and dramatic. You know what? I wanted it to sound like a Pedro Almodóvar film looks.”
You Will Not Die is basically an elongated form of musical therapy, and a lot of the album dwells on Nakhane’s struggles growing up gay in a strict, Christian household. But he’s not trying to exorcise his demons with this album – he’s trying to understand them.
“I wanted to write about my formative years and my childhood, my family. It’s not that every song on the album is diaristic, but there is a huge chunk of my life in there. You collect the files of the last 29 years of your life, and bind them together and see where you are. And I needed to close that chapter without anger or self-righteousness. The older I get, the more I realise: those people that hurt you, maybe they didn’t do it on purpose.”
Nakhane describes himself as a “multimedia artist”, having written his debut novel, Piggy Boy’s Blues, back in 2015. As you might have guessed by now, the novel was published to almost universal critical acclaim. Nakhane tends to attract critical acclaim the way other people attract crumbs. But he says success comes with its own internal catch, the bit they never warn you about.
“I don’t know if I can write a more dramatic album than this one, so where do I go from here?” he asks, genuinely puzzled. He thinks for a moment, then tosses out one last profundity. “Why do you always have to incapacitate yourself to make the good art?”
Nakhane plays Mona Foma on Sunday January 20 and Howler on Saturday February 2. More info and tickets via respective festival and venue websites.
