Mmangaliso’s album has everything for listeners’ needs without diluting the Living Word of God, writes Ace Moloi.
On 28 June 2024, the crown princess of contemporary Christian music and former Idols SA hopeful, Mmangaliso, dropped her debut album, Living Word. This is the KZN-born singer’s first complete body of work under Koko Records, after winning the label’s online talent search in 2022.
Voluntary information about me: I’m a dedicated consumer of albums; one of the few left given technology’s relentless assault on our attention spans. So, I was excited when I learnt that Mmangaliso, one of the artists that can actually sing, would be releasing a whole meal to feast on. Albums are a thread. A thought process. They carry a common message that knits all songs together, regardless of their temperament. A motif. This is vitally important in gospel music as both an artform and a spiritual expression. As you’ll discover, Mmangaliso’s work honours this practice with distinction.
Produced by Nqubeko Mbatha, with the multi-award-winning Ntokozo Mbambo as the vocal director, Living Word consists of 10 full tracks and a bonus instrumental playing for 51 minutes. The album also boasts a bandstand to die for. Nqubeko Mbatha pressing all keys, crowd favourite Sabu Satsha chopping and pocketing on drums, Qhubekani Mthethwa roaring on the bass, Sibusiso Mnguni behind organs, as well as Tshepo Moloi and Ray Green teaming up on guitars. Again, Siyanda Zulu (aka Slash Horns) and Ayo Solanke blow the horn and sax respectively, while Ndu Khubisa makes an appearance on strings.
The majority of the album was penned by Mmangaliso, with the exception of one song, Beautiful, written by Nqubeko. Beautiful is a self-titled thing of beauty, a smooth ballad for the Lord sung authentically from a place of adoration. Listening to it, believers are reminded of the one true love that never altered when it alteration (the Cross) found, a love Dr Tumi calls “a perfect sacrifice…nailed upon the cross”.
Mmangaliso applies herself diligently to this song. The little girl in her who kept a songbook full of love songs and thought her Idols fame would launch her as “a South African version of H.E.R” comes out to play in the sun, running barefoot in a flower garden, holding her floral dress with one hand and giggling with no anxiousness about tomorrow. She sounds like a smitten Bride in the glorious presence of her Groom, lavishing Him with love and admiration, in Spirit and in Truth.
When all is sung and played, it’s what she does right at the 4:16 timestamp that locks the song in the forevers of my heart. She revisits Reginald Heber’s 1826 hymn, Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty, in a brief but profound moment of ministry continuity. But she stops only at the third holy! for you to belt out the rest of the words: “Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee.”
As a teaser to the album, the charismatic vocalist dropped Ruler of Everything, accompanied by stunning visuals. Musically, Ruler is a distinct song in the local gospel music context in that it has a global sound. Its production is also beautifully disciplined. It’s not an overly arranged earful. It’s the kind of song not every musician can play – or enjoy playing – as it demands to be respected, checked, known. I understand why its instrumental was included in the album. Maybe a YouTube tutorial next?
On the commercial front, Ruler belongs to international markets dominated by the likes of Hillsong and Elevation Worship, not as an African worship fetish for the world to marvel at, but an equal peer in the marketplace. Doctrinally, and on the backdrop of a post-modern world order that promotes fluid personal truths, Mmangaliso stands on a hill to proclaim: “You spoke Your Word and things became. They hold together in Your name. Without You nothing came to be. Everything and even me.”
The Beyoncé of the album is Ngelaphakade, a hun that was cheated out of the main position when the label opted for Ruler of Everything as wife (read: single) material. In the album’s sequencing, Ngelaphakade is the first song you hear, and it has such a power slap that it knocks you out from the first bang. You may very well stop at it, happy to have found your jam, or afraid that if you play other songs, you’ll ruin it.
The song sells the project compellingly and introduces its conceptual framework excellently. “Koshabalala konke. Kochitheka konke. Ilizwi lakho, Baba lona, ngelaphakade,” sing the album’s angelic backing voices of Phumzile Ndlangamandla, Sandile Cele and Mmangaliso herself on the chorus.
For Yours, O Lord, is a Living Word!
As a writer, Mmangaliso doesn’t force poetry out to a point of presenting a slapdash of incoherent lines, trying to be deep. At times, writers court and flirt with the abstract so much that they neglect the particular, and salvation is too personal to be nuanced. Her psalms flow from a content and assured heart, exercising creative restraint for the preeminent sake of scriptural accuracy.
This in no way diminishes Mmangaliso’s artistry. As an arts journalist, I believe in the artistic appreciation of gospel singers, and not just their ministry. Worship music is spiritual, but it’s still an artform. And as much as it’s art, what differentiates it is that it must be inspired by God’s Living Word. Mmangaliso emphasises this relationship between music and scripture succinctly in one of her radio interviews, asserting that to fulfil their divine function, gospel songs must preach the good news of Jesus Christ who saves.
Given this, what then am I saying about Mmangaliso’s penwomanship? I’m contending that the kind of simplicity in her writing can only be accomplished through confident ability. Simplicity is not incapacity but a result of intimacy with the subject, in this case being about living in the Word. So, her lyrical clarity comes from her secret place.
Conclusively, Mmangaliso’s inaugural offering is a timeless and relevant piece of art that has everything for listeners’ needs. Recommended for everyone’s spiritual replenishment, it has songs catering for funky and contemplative personalities. The album is, according to one gospel blogger, “a testament to profound theological truths”, with its musical arrangements “serving as conduits for spiritual reflection and renewal”.
And Mmangaliso, with the remarkable athleticism in her register, is an obedient raven commissioned to deliver a message of hope, holiness and redemption in a nation flooded by sin and chronic sadness and Ramaphosa’s economy and mjolo and Joburg traffic and SARS and political something-something.
Ace Moloi is a copywriter, author and editor with interests in literature, communications and the arts.
