Since the release of their 2016 debut single “WTF (Squared)” Sandiso Ngubane has been changing up the kwaito game under their moniker, Mx Blouse, rewriting the rules with every red-hot release.
Much like their music, a fusion of kwaito, house, and hip hop, Mx Blouse doesn’t feel the need to boxed by gender norms, roles, and expectations, shining an especially bright shade of fuck you under our #SpheresOfQueer spotlight.
On the back of a successful European tour, Mx Blouse returned to South Africa days before lockdown, waving goodbye to a slew of upcoming shows, including a Boiler Room set and a tour to France. “The last year has been shit, to be quite honest. I’m just grateful for the support I’ve had from my friends and everyone around me just like helping me to stay afloat. I’ve been through many depression episodes. It’s been exhausting, I don’t have much positive to say about the lockdown experience,” they admit, still with a bitter taste in their mouth.
Not interested in reliving the last year’s horrors any further, Ngubane recalls their “all over the place” childhood, growing up in Esikhawini, Melmoth, Durban, Newcastle (all in KwaZulu Natal), and Alberton North (Joburg). Ngubane recalls playing in the streets with the boys, rolling tires, stealing the neighbours’ fruit, dressing dolls with the girls, but mostly enjoying their alone time spent reading, writing, and catching up with their imaginary friends.
We talk school and Ngubane laughs and shares, “I was far less feminine in highschool. [Moving around a lot] was an opportunity for me to present myself as something different. I was always conscious of, okay, this is the reason I got bullied at my last school, so I’m going to try to conceal a lot of who I am in order to avoid that”, a game many queers have to play to survive.
“I’ve always felt different, like I just don’t recall not feeling different”, Ngubane explains, and laughs it off when I ask if theirs was the family environment that encouraged sharing these differences out loud. “I don’t have a family where it’s like, ‘Oh my god I feel like this, do you think you can help me?’, like feelings, what the fuck?” They explain that they’ve never felt the need to come out to anyone other than themself. “All I can do is live my life as freely as possible and if someone asks questions, I’m more than happy to chat to them”, they pause before adding, “coming out comes with this idea of acceptance and tolerance and I don’t think anyone has the power to be accepting me or tolerating me — you’re not God”, they reason — a refreshing, empowered perspective.
Ngubane identifies as non-binary, sharing that they do not feel they fit the traditional ideas of being a man or being a woman, but rather existing — and thriving — somewhere in the middle. They become more serious as they say, “I don’t feel the need to explain it to anyone, and at times I think maybe even talking about my gender was a mistake because it invites these sorts of questions and this sort of pressure to always explain myself and I find that pretty annoying”, but patiently indulges me as they elaborate, “It just becomes a burden for queer people in the arts space, constantly having to address this issue of who I am, my gender, my sexuality, because our work ends up being secondary to who we are and that’s kind of unfair — it’s exhausting!”.
Catching the cue, I segue into their work. From becoming a full-blown fashion writer to copywriting to PR to arts journalism, Ngubane has done it all. “I’ve done so much. I’ve lived 20 000 lives, man,” they laugh and confess, “It was fun, but like with everything else I’ve done in life before music, I’ve had to confront the fact that, you know, maybe it’s just not for me”.
Since their debut release, Ngubane has been pouring every ounce of their honesty and truth into their music, with a number of radio chart-topping singles, EPs, a lockdown album, and a couple of local and international tours under their belt. Their music deals with a vast range of topics including being fetishized as a black individual (“A Fetish Ain’t Love”) to the pain of death (“Ukufa”), to unreciprocated love (“No Match”). And while these are the works that they wish could go before their sexual identity 100% of the time, Ngubane does understand the importance of representations of queer culture that are more multi-faceted than the typical queer archetype that is always fabulously dressed, calling everyone “darling”, and always there for comic relief.
Ngubane’s biggest frustration with being queer, however, is in how queer people are the biggest hypocrites of them all, demanding representation and inclusion, demanding brand collaborations, but never showing up for and supporting each other. They conclude, “It’s exhausting, and it’s frustrating because we just don’t join the dots between the things we say and the things we do and how they affect each other, and I think it’s important that we start doing that”.
Check out #SpheresOfQueer Part 1 featuring Armand Joubert here.
Check out #SpheresOfQueer Part 2 featuring Tazmé Pillay here.
