He’s soft-spoken, gentle and mellow. But when you hear Nakhane Touré sing, he’s formidable and fiercely emotional.
The 25-year-old singer-songwriter from Alice in the Eastern Cape is South Africa’s new rock darling, with his debut album Brave Confusion making waves all over the country.
“The album opens with a hadeda,” he says. “It’s there. Just at the beginning.” That was a mistake, of course. The rest of the album is very deliberate, he says.
“I wanted a nine- or 10-track album. Nine perfect tracks. It eventually became 13 but each song was served differently.
“It’s kind of like little vignettes but a flowing. I knew I wanted it to be personal, vocally focused, and moving all the time.”
Touré says It’s an album from beginning to end. You can have your singles, but it’s something to be listened to as a whole.
The first single, Christopher, is about his partner. “I knew Christopher was going to be the first single. It’s almost stalkerish in a way,” he says with a laugh.
“You notice it says ‘in a bar we will meet’ … I hadn’t met Chris yet.”
The album is a brave leap into the world of gay love songs and minimalism in a country that loves big sounds.
“Even when you’re really minimalist, you can create sound that serves the song. You don’t need huge sounds to make a song powerful.
“This album is a lot of Bowie. Morrissey. Late Talk Talk. A lot of techno influences.”
Devouring music with a touch of P!nk
Growing up in the Eastern Cape and moving to Johannesburg at 14, Toure was exposed to all sorts of music and devoured all of it with veracity.
“I listened to a lot of soul. I was brought up on it.”
He was adopted by his Port Elizabeth aunt and her husband at five or six, but both his biological parents were “amazing singers”.
They both came from very musical families.
“People thought I wouldn’t have it, but when I was growing up my family – my adoptive family – sang in choirs. My childhood was that – Power Rangers on TV, homework then choir practice.”
Around 14, Touré’s parents moved to Johannesburg and living with other family who had DStv exposed him to MTV and VH1.
“When I moved to Johannesburg, I started getting an allowance and bought CDs.
“Don’t laugh, but my first CD that I bought with my own money was P!nk’s M!Ssundaztood. It was so rock ‘n roll!
“Then I went to the emo side. My Chemical Romance. Nails painted black. But now, even though I can’t stand that music, whenever Black Parade plays I always sing.”
Touré then discovered the Internet.
“Pitchfork. NME. All those publications that were talking about old and new bands. I decided then to be a musician and I hit the net hard. I needed to do my research.”
Partying with the shirt off
Working at Look & Listen helped, he says.
“I would borrow CDs. Buy CDs. Say ‘Oh that looks interesting. Let me take it home’. Reading about Jeff Buckley who inspired Radiohead… And then one day watching VH1 I hear Grace. I was blown away. All this music! I was really plugged in.”
“Oh I’m completely a music snob,” he says. “You have to be picky about what you listen to and what you feed yourself. I’ve listened to shit music and I know what’s good and what’s shit.
“It was then, when I was devouring all this music that I went back to soul in a different way. Listening to it differently. Listening to it with a trained ear, you realise they’re geniuses, and you can make music that’s fun and be genius, and if people were given artistic music, they wouldn’t reject it.”
A new scene, a new direction
Touré says he was adverse toward the move to Johannesburg.
“I was going to stay in Eastern Cape and then I realised I couldn’t. Moving was a culture shock. Schools are different. Kids are different. It’s a melting pot.
“You find a Xhosa person you’re like ‘we’re gonna be friends!
“But people hearing you’re from the Eastern Cape have this attitude toward you like you’re from the villages. You get used to it.
“I only accepted the move to Joburg a few years ago. I wanted to move back to study music. But I studied at AFDA. Dropped out. Worked at Look & Listen. Then went to wits to study literature. I was studying music composition at AFDA. It’s weird. Music is so part of my history.
“But through all my music tastes, I want to be rock ‘n roll.”
But rock club bathrooms are really gross, he says. He never goes into them even though he loves rock clubs.
“I was at Doors about three years ago. It was crazy. I jumped not the stage took of my shirt and I was really into The Beautiful People by Marilyn Manson. I was the only black person there of course.
“I was pulling in the crowd and getting them riled up. People started taking their shirts off. It was mad.
“My friend pulled me down and told me to control myself and put on my shirt. Not one of my proudest moments, really.”
Fallback plan
Touré says he wanted to lecture.
“I wanted to teach kids English and be the cool lecturer who plays music at night. Life is so unpredictable. I always knew I wanted to be a musician at some point in my life. I didn’t know how or when but I knew it would happen.”
His father told him he needed to have a fallback plan, but Touré rejects the idea completely.
“Why have a fallback plan? Leap into it. Go at it 100%.”
“If you have a fallback plan you will fall back. If you go at something with your entire being you have to work harder.”
He says he’s grown up so much since he decided to pursue music.
“I never really grew up until recently. Doing your first load of washing is the worst. And you learn a lot about yourself.”
He says he’s so different because of all the hard work he’s put into it.
“What I was, if you were here at the beginning, wow. I barely play acoustic guitar anymore. I want different sounds. I want to play. I’m always onto the next thing. It could be my biggest flaw or best quality. I already have songs for the next album.”
He says he wanted Brave Confusion to be centred on a couple of things. “I wanted it to be revealing.
“The next one I want it to be more gravity defying. Naked. The first album is so easy to make.”
John Lennon is so smug
“The second, there’s so much expectation, especially if it’s been received well. You ask yourself different things. ‘Do I do the same thing, or do I diverge slightly, or do a complete sharp left turn. I’m not going to repeat myself. I refuse.”
He says the best artists are the ones who change with each album. “The Strokes, Interpol … Their albums all sound the same, even though they’re so good. It’s not the way an artist should evolve.
“The Beatles are a different band from Sergeant Pepper to The White Album … It’s so vastly different.
“Paul McCartney is my favourite. Everyone likes John Lennon. I find him smug.
“He had this thing about being the ‘leader’, but McCartney was really the brains behind the band. Not the talent. But the brains.”
‘This is such a gay album’
Being gay, Touré says, doesn’t define the music but definitely gives it shape.
“I’m so sensitive. Super sensitive. I always think it’s my fault. It disgusts me.
“You wake up and say you’re not going to be sensitive today and then Chris says something that makes me feel bad and I feel like crying in the bathroom.
My boyfriend is a really good guy. He says “I want you to be you. Not strong. Be sensitive.”
It’s a very gay album, he says.
I only realised this when it was finished. It’s also very religious. I never get the two sides comfortably together. But I never saw faith and music as mutually exclusive.”
Brave Confusion is on the edge of falling apart, he says.
“I will never be pop in the Rihanna sense and I can never be comfortable with myself with doing that. But it’s a pop album. At the risk of sounding pretentious, I don’t want to just sell. I want to make music.”
Touré talks about his sexuality as something that doesn’t define him, but defines what he does in a big way.
Being gay and in the music industry … It’s political with a small ‘p’. Not all politics are placard politics. It’s the most dangerous kind, the kind that’s under the surface. It’s what’s inside. You can’t tackle the big when you haven’t tackled the little,” he says.
“But until I fully understand something I’d rather keep my mouth shut.”
Coming out, coming home
Coming out to his family was not hard, but it was no mean feat either.
“My family is vocal and they kind of prepared me for Christopher.
“When I came out, after all the shouting they gave me a space to speak. That’s one thing I adore about them. I’m the only one in my generation who has been vocal in challenging the family.
“But you don’t always have to voice your opinion on things.”
But the gay songs on the album he says, is something we need to address.
“I give you my words and you make of it what you will. But I’m not Liberace. Why do I have to be that? He does not represent me.”
He says he knows now what this brave leap into gay love songs means to people.
“It’s so amazing that people draw strength from me. That’s encouraging. I draw strength from so many people and influences, so it’s a compliment that people can draw strength from my music and my words.”
Brave Confusion is a beautiful album with vocals and guitar that will make your heart sing.
“The album was an exorcism. The conflict. The confusion. It’s full of the urge to live. I just want to live. That’s all. I want people to live. And music… Music feeds it.
“Music makes me want to live.” – Nikita Ramkissoon
