Busi Mhlongo – Urban Zulu

Vinyl 12"

Urban Zulu changed South Africa’s music forever, rewiring Zulu migrant roots music for the 21st Century. Busi Mhlongo’s powerful voice and challenging lyrics soar over driving bass lines and virtuoso guitars of an all-star South African maskanda line-up, backed by a multi-national cast including Lokua Kanza, Brice Wassy, Jacques Djeyim and Will Mowatt.

With this album Busi Mhlongo subverted and then claimed Maskanda music’s previously patriarchal space, voicing a new social blues narrative. Her songs cut to the essence of simple joys, unrequited love, abuse in the name of love, and month-end blues.

Topping charts in Europe and South Africa, Urban Zulu struck critical and commercial success. "We Baba Omncane" reached a global audience as the sound track for an Adidas campaign, and the re-mix became a smash hit for Black Coffee.