Hymns of Bantu

Like William Blake the poet, who could detect a world in a grain of sand, Abel Selaocoe is attuned to the infinite depths of the human psyche. The South African cellist, composer and vocalist has a way of articulating profound emotions and feelings in a multitude of musical styles that transcend national and cultural borders. Hymns of Bantu, his second album, is gloriously rich in pulsating dances, ecstatic chants, otherworldly laments and joyous expressions of love, the intangible, heartfelt stuff of life, mined from different continents and centuries. “I think this recording is to do with universal truths,” Selaocoe tells Apple Music Classical. “It’s about things that we can all connect to, but it also contains pieces written in the context of my home, of my culture. This is why I start the album with a tune called Tsohle Tsohle, which translates into English as ‘everything is everything’. Honestly, if you get into a taxi in South Africa with 14 people and say, ‘Does anybody know Tsohle Tsohle?’, 14 hands will go up! It’s such a beautifully popular song there.” Selaocoe’s interpretation reflects his desire to give new meaning to pieces he has known since childhood, not least by extracting a sense of the universal from the particular. “Tsohle Tsohle means that everything is made by you in the image of you,” he notes. “I wanted to speak about universalities rather than highlight what’s so different about what I’m doing.” Selaocoe wrote fresh lyrics for Emmanuele, another South African favourite, harnessing its big hymn tune to words that celebrate those who work with their hands. “It’s quite a big thing in South Africa because much the population make their living that way. It’s such a different way of being from sitting at a computer.” The musicians of Manchester Collective bring their own energy and ease with different genres to Hymns of Bantu. They help shape the change in mood between the album’s upbeat opening tracks and Tshepo or “Faith”, the prayerful seco