Bonga Kwana Celebrates Queer Love with New Single
It’s wedding season and Afro-pop star Bonga Kwana is celebrating queer love with her new single “Sivulele”. As usual, the fierce and fresh artist is weaving nostalgia, tradition and queer culture into a single expression of artful lyrics and soulful vocals with this new song.
Derived from a traditional African wedding song, “Sivulele” is a song that almost all South African black people have sung along to in wedding celebrations. The musical inspiration and references are from Brenda Fassie’s “Vulindlela”, and the song is able to balance its nostalgic elements with a modern production touch.
“Sivulele” takes the concept of ilobola and traditional heterosexual marriage and turns it around. The title translates to “let us be” in this context, which is essentially a call for audiences to accept and celebrate queer love, marriage and freedom of expression.
“When people see me, I want them to know that even though the odds are stacked against you by virtue of being a black woman and queer, you can do this, and you can make sure that people respect you along the way,” shares Bonga Kwana.
Bonga Kwana also recently released the beautiful lullaby Suwara Mama as part of Platoon’s African Lullaby album which also featured artists like Msaki, TRESOR, Ami Faku, Manana, Aymos and others.
Co-written with Ntsika from the Soil and produced by Mdoovar (Mdudzi Memela), you can now stream or download Bonga Kwana’s Sivulele here: https://Platoon.lnk.to/sivulele