Brownswood Recordings

Brownswood Recordings are proud to present brand new music by IzangoMa, a 15 piece ensemble from Pretoria, South Africa, led by vocalist and guitarist Sibusile Xaba and keys player / producer Ashley Kgabo. Their avant-garde debut single ‘City Lights’ is available digitally on Friday 3rd December 2021.

‘City Lights’ is the work of many hands, anchored by surrealist, improvisational sensibilities and playfulness. It begins as an incessant rapture where sound is this explosive light force response to the city’s concrete. It offers us a cathartic moment to return to our breathing, to tend to our roots, to bask in the sentimentality of living, to dance our way against the disintegration and loneliness that modern life reproduces. Instead, integration becomes alive in the high energy and percussive drum palettes, in the free echoing vocal chants, and lyrical layering of the horn section.

IzangoMa’s novel signature and performance brings a beautiful acoustic ecology that cannot be held by genre but reminds us that we are part of a miraculous pattern of the earth’s cycles and life forms through sound. With the predominant meaning being “healer”, Izangoma also, when pronounced or spoken out (when written like this) "iza ngo ma", translates to "it comes from mother."

“May this music awake the mother mind in all of us, may it bring love.”

IzangoMa’s ‘City Lights’ is available digitally worldwide on 3rd December 2021 2021 via Brownswood Recordings.