AfriPulse
Intentional: Billy Monama quotes Nelson Mandela on the power of
music to elevate and liberate, to unite people in a shared voice.
Billy Monama says The Rebirth of Ubuntu is about memory. The concert he founded and curates is now preparing for its fifth edition at the Joburg Theatre on May 29 and 30.
Over two nights, a line-up that includes Lira, Zoë Modiga and Vusi Nova will perform alongside a 20-piece orchestra in a production that Monama describes as researched, structured and intentional.
But the idea behind the concert began with a sense that something had shifted in the role music plays in society.
“I grew up in a society where I saw musicians being role models, being the mouthpiece of the society,” Monama says. “The songs they wrote advanced society. They gave hope to the people of South Africa.”
That memory of music as a form of public language continues to shape how he thinks about his work. It’s also what prompted him to ask a question that has since become the foundation of The Rebirth of Ubuntu.
“What is the role of musicians for us now?”
The answer, in his view, is not flattering. He speaks about a culture that has shifted toward spectacle, toward the performance of success and excess. Concerts become spaces where the memory that lingers is more about the lifestyle around it than the music.
“When you ask people how the concert was, the only thing they remember is the champagne,” he says.
The Rebirth of Ubuntu is designed as a counter to that. Monama speaks about it in almost ceremonial terms. He compares it to a form of collective gathering, something closer to a thanksgiving than a night out.
“The youth of 1976, they gave their lives for us to be here,” he says. “The women of 1955, they gave their lives for us. So we cannot take those significant events lightly.”
This year’s theme, “50 Years of Youth Legacy”, anchors the concert in that history, providing a structure that informs the entire production. Monama describes the show as moving through time, beginning with early composers and building toward the present.
Archival imagery, drawn from photographers like Sam Nzima and Peter Magubane, is integrated into the performance. Songs are contextualised, placed within a broader narrative of resistance, expression and identity.
“It is a researched concert,” he says. “We incorporate the graphics, the photos, lighting, to amplify our performance.”
The intention is to create an experience that asks the audience to give both their attention and their reflection. He wants people to arrive prepared for that engagement, even if they don’t yet know what it will demand of them.
“You must bring a handkerchief,” he says. “We are going to take you through the journey.”
That journey includes moments of rupture and transition. Monama speaks about the shift that followed the arrival of democracy, when a generation turned away from the language of struggle toward something more celebratory.
“Kwaito emerged, it was about party times,” he says. “But for me, activism is in my blood. We cannot just be celebrating throughout. The enemy is still out there.”
But Monama says he’s calling for balance more than he is just being nostalgic for a bygone era. He doesn’t reject joy or celebration. He questions what is lost when music abandons its ability to speak to the conditions people live in.
It’s a perspective shaped by his own experiences growing up. He remembers the impact of the assassination of Chris Hani on his community, how grief and anger moved through households and conversations.
“I saw how it affected my mother, my neighbour, everyone in the community,” he says.
That moment pushed him toward history, toward trying to understand the forces that shaped the country around him. He turned to newspapers and documentaries, piecing together a sense of context.
At the same time, music was entering his life in a more direct way. He picked up the guitar in church, encountering the work of Abdullah Ibrahim and absorbing the sounds that had travelled back into the country with returning exiles like Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa.
The two strands, political awareness and musical discovery, developed alongside each other. At school, he became involved in student organising, mobilising classmates and engaging in forms of protest that reflected his understanding of what previous generations had fought for.
Later, he enrolled to study political science in Pretoria. The intention was clear but the path shifted.
“The revolution was burning inside of me,” he says.
Music became the medium through which he could engage the questions that had been forming for years.
He moved to Johannesburg and enrolled at the Central Johannesburg College, where he began to formalise his understanding of composition and performance. That decision did not mean abandoning activism. It meant translating it.
“The way I use music is to address socio-political matters,” he says.
That philosophy extends into how he curates The Rebirth of Ubuntu. The selection of artists is deliberate, shaped by what each performer can bring to the broader narrative.
“I know each and every artist, their capabilities,” he says.
He speaks about conversations with Lira, about her connection to Miriam Makeba and how that informs what she will perform. He recalls seeing Zoë Modiga on stage and recognising an affinity with the lineage of artists the concert seeks to honour.
Collective gathering: From left: Zoë Modiga, Billy Monama and Lira.
Photos: Supplied
Each artist is part of a larger structure. They perform their own material but they also engage with the work of those who came before them. Monama is careful about how this is framed.
“A cover is when you are performing someone’s song in a hotel lobby,” he says.
“When you come on our stage, there is research, there is presentation, there is an orchestra. That is not a cover.”
The orchestra itself is central to the production. Monama describes the ensemble in terms of its diversity, musicians from different cultural backgrounds coming together to create a shared sound.
“When you look at the stage, you see a rainbow nation,” he says.
That visual and sonic interplay reflects the broader idea of Ubuntu he is trying to evoke. A sense of interconnectedness, of different histories and identities meeting in a single space.
Beyond the stage, that idea extends into educational work. Through initiatives like the Grazroots Project, Monama has focused on documenting and teaching South African musical heritage.
“When we were doing research, we could not find things that were written down,” he says.
The project has since produced books that are now used in universities and schools, creating a foundation for younger musicians to engage with their history.
Workshops and masterclasses form part of this work, preparing artists to think about how they represent themselves and their country in global spaces.
“Music is the creative footprint of humanity,” he says. “It tells shared stories.”
He returns often to the idea that music teaches people how to listen. Not only to melody and rhythm but to each other. It’s this capacity for listening that he believes gives music its power to shift perspectives.
That power is not abstract to him. He describes moments from previous editions of the concert, audience members moved to tears, people choosing to put their phones away and fully experience what is happening in front of them.
“I have seen people change,” he says. He frames those moments i
Source: Mg.co.za | Read the Full Story…
