FEATURE

Get up on your feet to celebrate the homecoming of Shingai, the girl from Lewisham bringing her sound and style back to Zimbabwe

For a platinum-selling music sensation on a mission to launch a new chapter in a national culture, Shingai is unassuming, down-to-earth and really, really nice. I find her in the corner of the cocktail bar she’s chosen for our interview in Shoreditch, East London, looking elegant in a neat, black jumper that makes her hair jewellery pop. She’s just arrived home from Leicester where she played the Africa Music Festival UK 2023 — the Legends Tour alongside Zimbabwe music giants Jah Prayzah and Winky D and she’s got a bag full of shopping that she’s picked up on the way here. She greets me like we’re long-lost friends, apologising for not spotting me before I spotted her, urging me to sit down and calling over the waiter.

We dive into talk of Zimbabwe, united by the fact that we’re both missing it terribly. After half an hour (and a strong cocktail: “Sundowners!” Shingai says as we tuck into our drinks) I’ve completely forgotten how much I normally dislike interviewing popstars. Because Shingai is preoccupied with a mission far bigger than her own career. And that mission is this: to launch a new brand of Bantu music, art and fashion, celebrating the sounds and crafts of southern and east Africa in a way that’s never happened before.

“When all the other countries were getting excited about their independence, everyone was just dragging us. If you were Ghanaian or Nigerian or Kenyan or South African you were allowed to be proud and optimistic. We weren’t really given that. Growing up in London as a Zimbabwean, you had to right all the wrongs that had been told in the media. So I guess a lot of us assimilated and blended into South African culture. But now we can repaint our story in a more colourful, balanced way, and give props to the people that came before us.”

Shingai’s mission is this: to launch a new kind of music, art and fashion, one that celebrates the sounds and crafts of south-east Africa in a way that has never been done before

If any Zimbabwean artist has the influence and experience to launch a new brand, it is Shingai, Zimbabwe’s biggest international popstar. Almost as an aside, she mentions her time in LA, working with Will.I.Am and Janet Jackson’s songwriters who loved the Zimbabwean mbira music she played them, and I’m reminded how phenomenal her musical success has been.

Born and brought up in London, Shingai was at the BRIT school in Croydon when she met guitarist Dan Smith and together they formed Sonarfly — the perfect name for a band who fluttered between genres: sometimes jazz, sometimes funk, sometimes pop, always catchy. The band soon found themselves in talks with major UK labels, but there was a catch: they only wanted Shingai and asked her to ditch her band. She refused, so the friends went back to normal life.

Five years later, the sacrifice paid off when they were spotted by a music executive from Universal who saw a photograph of Sonarfly riding on a merry-go-round, with Shingai hanging off one of the horses, guitar in hand. Immediately captivated, Universal signed the band on the spot and put them on a plane to LA. And so the Noisettes were born.

An indie-rock sensation, the band had instant success, hitting top ten music charts in the UK and here in Zimbabwe. They played big-name international festivals such as Glastonbury, but it was their performances in Africa which Shingai talks about most: at Malawi’s Lake of Stars she shared the stage with the late Zimbabwean legend Oliver Mtukudzi. Those of you who were at the HIFA music festival in Zimbabwe in 2013 may remember her climbing the lighting rig and hanging upside down while singing. Artists she’s collaborated with during her career include Annie Lennox, Dizzee Rascal and Dennis Ferrer.

The Noisettes last played in 2019 and since then Shingai has been building a solo career, launching her own record label, Zimtron, to release her Ancient Futures EP, which references her uncle Thomas Mapfumo, and reflects the mbira music soundscape that has been her inspiration. To launch your label is a brave move, in keeping with the confidence and defiance that makes her debut full-length album, Too Bold, pack such a punch. The title song says it all: “I’m not the girl you knew before” — and the mesmerising intro track explains why: “There might be a Shingai that you don’t know/What if I told you that I’ve been told I’m too dark, too dark/Too smart, too bold/That shit was making my blood run cold.”

Shingai is returning to her roots. Not that she hasn’t always been influenced by Zimbabwe and traditions of her parents’ birth country. It’s just that now she’s letting her heritage take centre stage as the defining part of her identity. Her latest songs are infused with stirring mbira rifts and the polyrhythmic shake-shake-shake of hoshos. The chanting on “War Drums” is done by her cousins, recorded in her Gogo’s village on a trip to Malawi with the Noisettes.

“Harare To Mutare”, Shingai’s latest single, addresses the trauma of migration and “how this renaissance of our culture is helping us find healing and find our way home, whatever home means to us.” In “Battle Scars” she writes for the first time about what it was like losing her father at a young age. “Writing about it has been very cathartic,” she says. “The song says, ‘I’ve got battle scars but I wear them like armour/Oh for my father/Driving them Rhodesian cars’. That essentially means that my dad never recovered from the battle scars he faced, he died from things he never recovered from in the war.”

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Her lyrics are a chimurenga-esque rallying cry to Zimbabweans in the diaspora — “We were the ones they said wouldn’t make it/You’ve got to go and get your birthright” — urging them to reconnect with their roots and rise above western prejudices: “Too dark, don’t let them tell you you’re too dark/Don’t let them tеll you you’re too dark/How great thou art.”

Shingai is done with working for other people and is determined that from now on any success she has will benefit Zimbabwe, not London. She is driven — and perhaps a little burdened — by a sense of responsibility to make things better for future generations after she herself benefited from the sacrifices her parents made. She’s founded Ubuntu Futures, a “sustainable eco-culture centre” just outside Harare, where Shingai’s team will run permaculture projects with local farmers and build a creative centre to teach music, dance, storytelling, arts and crafts. Her vision is to host international artists on creative retreats, encouraging collaborations, and boosting the Bantu brand Shingai is envisioning.

It will be the physical home Shingai dreams of on African soil where, it seems, her heart has always been. Listening to the story of her childhood, it’s not hard to understand why. Since her earliest years, the sounds and people of her parents’ homeland have nurtured and reassured a shy, sometimes sad, little girl. Some of her earliest memories are falling asleep in the dressing room at the Africa Centre in London’s Covent Garden where her uncle Wala Danga — the original African music promoter — hosted African artists. Shingai’s mum would take her along to the gigs and then cook sadza for the artists afterwards at their home in south London.

“I grew up with all these musicians just jamming around me. They’d be like, ‘Pick this up!’ and I’d say, ‘What is it?’ ‘They are hoshos!’ they’d tell me. ‘It’s a hollowed-out pumpkin. You just have to keep time.’ I’d be like, ‘Oh my God, that’s really cool.’ I remember loving the knowledge and loving learning about the artistry of Bantu creative culture, the storytelling, the spirituality of everything.”

Then, aged nine, came the love of her Gogo in Malawi, where her mother sent Shingai and her twin sister to recover from the death of their father. “I felt like suddenly I just couldn’t really speak, I couldn’t express myself. I guess, not being able to have the language to talk about grief at that time.”

‘I grew up with lots of musicians jamming around me. They’d say, “Pick it up! It’s a hosho, a hollowed-out pumpkin. You just have to keep time.” I just thought that was so cool’

They stayed in Malawi for a full year, taking trips around the country, playing with their cousins and doting on a puppy they adopted. Shingai’s fondest memories are helping their Gogo with her tailoring business. “She literally sewed up my broken heart,” Shingai says. “My mum sent her this industrial sewing machine, and Gogo essentially had a fashion house in the middle of area 25, Lilongwe. She employed a team of four or five amazing women for the whole year that I was there. I was very quiet when I got there, and then she would give me something to do. ‘Wind the bobbin up,’ she’d tell me. ‘Undo the wool for me. Make sure you don’t get any knots in it.’ She knew how to get me to open up.”

The twin sisters enrolled at a local school, learning in English and Chichewa. “I just remember thinking, ‘Wow! I’m getting this education under a tree, but it’s really good education.’ Nobody’s acting up. No one’s throwing erasers around, because you’ve only got one, you’re not about to lose it!” In her Gogo’s compound, Shingai the artist was born. “I found my confidence in Malawi,” she remembers. “I was just always singing. When I was helping my auntie or my Gogo with whatever they were doing I’d say, ‘I’ve heard of a song. Do you want me to sing it for you with the wooden spoon?’ They encouraged me. They said, ‘You’re really good at this. This is what you should do. You enjoy this, don’t you? Do more!’ Then slowly, slowly I found my voice. That time saved me, for sure.”

By the time they arrived back in London, Shingai’s grades in the secondary school entrance exams were so good the teachers didn’t believe it. “I remember one of our teachers said to my mum ‘I thought you said they’d been in Africa?’ My mum said to them, ‘Schools in Africa are good! Do you want them to take the test again? Because I’m pretty sure you’re going to get the same result.’ Thanks to Malawi we got into a grammar school, we were in the top ten in our whole year.”

When Shingai talks about Zimbabwe and Malawi there’s determination, passion and sincerity in her voice. She buzzes with the energy of a woman on a mission, but the playfulness that has characterised her performances since the Noisettes days is definitely still there. At her last gig she cartwheeled onto stage. “I’m not taking any responsibility for the cartwheels!” she laughs. “I’m going to blame my ancestors. When I go on stage, first of all I pray and I give thanks to my ancestors. The moment you give thanks to your totem and your totem is monkey — mine is Soko — all hell is going to break loose on stage. I just feel like I call in their agility. I call in their confidence. I call in their gift for storytelling. I pray and give thanks to God and my ancestors — my mother is Shumba so I call on them for courage.”

Zimbabwean music and Bantu traditions have always whispered around the edges of her music, but now she’s putting them centre stage. The Too Bold album features traditional African instrumentation with digital, futuristic sounds — a theme that started with her solo EP Ancient Futures. What hasn’t changed is Shingai’s staggeringly beautiful voice, which Rolling Stone magazine described as “equal parts Iggy Pop and Billie Holiday”. In 2021 she collaborated with Zimbabwean producer Verseless writing “No Fear” in the Harare suburb of Glen Lorne. In its music video, Shingai and her friends take a road trip on an iconic “chicken bus” onto which Zimtron had asked Caligraph to paint a mural. The “No Fear” video is a stunning romp and reflects the evolution of Shingai’s creative process which has moved into a different space — literally.

“One of the unique features of Zimbabwean, Malawian, Southern African rhythms and melodies is that a lot of the composition and the singing is done in the outdoors. We’re outside people. We love nature. When I collaborate with people in Zim, we’ll just be outside with a Bluetooth speaker and some instruments. Writing outside is so beautiful because with the Noisettes or with other projects, everything was done indoors. So that’s going to change the music, right?”

(Right. I know this first hand after a failed effort to record a marimba band for a radio documentary in a studio. It sounded awful until we went outside. Marimba has to bounce off the trees to sound right.)

‘We’re still doing so much for other economies, so much for other places. The danger is that the place we’re from is never going to develop if we spend all our energy on other people’

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Back to those evenings, asleep under the table in a dressing room at London’s Africa Centre, the sounds of mbira and hosho seeping into her musical subconscious. The seeds of musicality were planted in Shingai’s heart, and also, perhaps, a sense of the injustices that she sings about today. Because, Shingai says, she was also aware of a darker side to this joyful music scene. An injustice that saw world-famous Zimbabwean performers getting paid a fraction of their western counterparts. A struggle to negotiate the logistics of travel that still characterises so many Zimbabwean experiences in Europe and the UK.

“I remember there was a time, probably in the Nineties, when the Bhundu Boys were at Wembley, and they turned up at my house at the end of their tour in a transit van. There were loads of them. My uncle was like, ‘Can you believe they were only given £50?’ So I guess I sensed that there was a bit of a dark side to it all — the way that they were treated and seeing all the misalignment caused to families by visas and papers. A lot of these bands would come through and a lot of these artists, writers, these overnight star sensations would be on BBC Radio 4 or the World Service. And there I was thinking, ‘But he’s got a hole in his shoe!’”

If this risks sounding bitter, let me be clear: Shingai’s sense of injustice doesn’t manifest in resentment — rather, a kind determination to change the conversation away from politics and history to everything positive Zimbabwe has to offer. Phrases such as “Ubuntu” or “Buntu”, she says, are a reminder that Zimbabwe is more than a political story. In turn she hopes that this will give Zimbabweans the confidence to invest in the country that is their cultural home.

“We’re still doing so much for other economies, so much for other places, so much for other record labels. I feel like the danger in that is the place that we’re from is never going to develop if we are spending our financial energy, creative energy, and intellectual, academic energy on growing other people’s businesses and allowing them to flourish. That doesn’t sit right with me and my heart. It doesn’t sit right with me because I’m like, ‘What if my dad didn’t have to go into exile? They’re really super-amazing, smart people. If they had stayed...”

Shingai lets the thought hang for a moment. “It’s a mixture of confidence and also maybe just that little bit of time needed for other diasporans to say, ‘OK, I’m going to take a risk.’ I’ve taken so many risks in the UK. I have a multi-platinum band that has sold the most records out of any Zimbabwe in the world to the point where we’re nearly on four billion streams for “Never Forget You”. But I don’t own the rights to my music. Zimbabwe doesn’t benefit from that. If Zimbabwe doesn’t benefit from that, then I haven’t finished my job.”

With that we say goodbye and head off into the night. Later, Shingai sends me a voicenote thanking me for the interview, because that’s the kind of person she is. “Let me know you’ve got home OK,” she ends her message. It’s a fitting sign-off for a woman who is going home herself.

She’s going back to the roots that she has at times been forced to deny, and going forward to, as she puts it, “a wonderful optimistic future of what is possible creatively as Zimbabweans and diasporans.”

Words by Charlotte Ashton
Photographs by Simon Webb