The fitting recipient of the accolade of the 2020 National Arts Festival Featured Artist is indigenous musician Madosini Latozi Mpahleni, best known as simply Madosini.

A series of 11 episodes (one released on each day of the Festival) offers glimpses of Madosini performing in varied settings – from grand stages to intimate rooms, solo and in conversation with other musicians. This series was made under Covid-19 lockdown, a process made even more complicated by the fact that Madosini herself fell ill and was in hospital for five weeks. This meant that filming her was not possible and, as a result, we have relied on existing and archival footage to create this tribute. There are great variations in the technical quality of the material, but they have been chosen to reflect Madosini’s powers as a musician, stage performer, storyteller, and icon of an extraordinary cultural tradition.

EPISODE 5 – MJEKO (TWO)
This episode shows the evolution of a project in which Madosini’s solo traditional music is brought into conversation with the jazz idiom.  It is a repeat of the beautiful song Mjeko from Episiode 1, but there the song was close to Madosini’s original experience as a young person, and here it is expanded into a layered, mesmerising musical experience.

If you haven’t purchased a ticket yet, click on the play button and you will be redirected to purchasing a ticket. All eleven episodes of this series are available for just R50.  PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU PURCHASE A TICKET TO ONE EPISODE OF ‘SONGS ARE LIKE THE GRASS’, YOU GAIN ACCESS TO ALL 11 EPISODES. 

Access the rest of the 11-episode series here.