Musician Desire Marea. Picture: Supplied
Johannesburg - Queer musician, creative and recently trained traditional healer Desire Marea, who was born Buyani Duma, is expected to release his second album, “On the Romance of Being”.
Based in Amandawe, a small township on the South Coast region in KwaZulu-Natal, Marea’s musical career is greatly influenced by his surroundings, the evolution of culture, tradition, healing, and fashion.
Being a healer or sangoma in South Africa often disadvantages one, as many people may find it challenging to understand this path. It becomes a more challenging course for Marea because of his sexuality, as society often discriminates against members of the LGBTIQA+ community.
“I have made peace with the fact that I cannot change anyone’s misconceptions about healers in modern-day society. I am focused on being a good healer. In doing the work, learning more, growing more, for the benefit of the individuals and bloodlines who need healing from my ancestors. If I do that, I will always feel okay,” Marea said.
His new album is immersed in music’s communal, ceremonial and healing qualities, sonically taking in post-gospel, spiritual jazz and the ancient music of the Nguni and Ndau people.
“The album centres my experience of being in a way that I previously did not feel liberated enough to do. As queer artists, we are constantly pressured to make political statements with our work, to construct grander meanings for the work to matter because, for a very long time, our lives did not matter.
“So with this work, my regular life is interesting enough. My life as Buyani, as Gogo Gwaza, as my mother’s son, and as an uncle in my community is worth writing about, and the music romanticises all the motions of my life,” he said.
The eight-track album will be available in April under Mute Records, an independent British music label established by Daniel Miller in 1978.
“The platform has released some of my favourite acts, and I was very honoured when they came with the opportunity to sign with them. The music will be available everywhere and will also have physical copies on vinyl and CD available,” Marea said.
Reflecting on his time in the studio, Marea said that recording the album was a memorable journey, but the session that stood out most for him was when he was recording the song “Skhathi”.
“The song is particularly special because it is the only song I have ever written for my mother. I also lost the original project file of the song six years ago, and it felt like a full-circle moment when we could recreate it with the band,” added Marea.
The second album comes three years after Marea released his debut album, “Desire”, in 2020. The pandemic was one of the obstacles that Marea faced and challenged their studio recording plans.
He explained that a lot has happened since he released his first album besides the music needing time to happen organically. Marea learnt shortly after the album release that he had a spiritual calling, and while coming to terms with that and what it entailed, Covid hit, leaving his musical career on pause.
He said he recorded the album a few months after graduating from initiation school, and the rest of the time was mostly spent preparing for the album release.
“I started making the music in 2020, even though one song is from 2017. Some songs also came during my initiation, and others came in other ways. But the moment I knew I had the album when I returned from Florence, Italy, in October 2021.
“I got home and immediately wrote ‘Ezulwini’ and ‘Be Free’. I knew then that the album was complete. I had said the missing phrases. That trip inspired me. I had just washed the dumane clay from initiation school off my hair, felt part of the world again and was excited to become a new person. I felt new. We went into the studio close to a month after that, and it took a high level of focus and spiritual labour to get it off the ground,” Marea said.
Before going solo, Marea co-founded the renowned Johannesburg collaborative FAKA duo with artist Fela Gucci. In addition to a lengthy international tour, the pair scored the Telfar show for New York Fashion Week, collaborated with Versace to soundtrack the Spring-Summer 2019 menswear show, and appeared on the Vogue Global 100.
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