Busi Mhlongo - Urbanzulu (Remastered) (2024)

In 1998, just four years after South Africa shed its political pariah status, the patriarchal foundations of the hybridised musical genre known as maskanda were emphatically upended. A product of the migrant labour system, maskanda, in its sound and often in its content, reflected the commodification of black labour and urbanisation through an exclusively male prism. A singularly gifted Inanda-born singer named Victoria Busisiswe Mhlongo forcefully shifted the status quo with her late-career opus, Urbanzulu; the title being a reference to her fluid and urbane artistic personae. Gifted with a keenly emotive vocal range, there was an authority to her craft befitting someone who had honed it over decades — much of those years spent in artistic exile in Portugal, Canada, the Netherlands, the United States and the United Kingdom. Mhlongos exile life kept her on the move, singing in night clubs, cabaret, theatre, and performing with the likes of Afro-funk band Osibisa and recording as lead singer with Julian Bahulas Jabula. As the world music genre gained European traction in the 80s, Mhlongos popularity grew. Based then in the Netherlands, she performed with the likes of Salif Keita, Manu Dibango and Brice Wassy, among others.