The Sensational Pretty Yende and The Would-Be Superstars

Go around a certain small town in Mpumalanga and you are likely to encounter residents who refer to it as eMkhondo whilst others will say it is Piet Retief. Down to a man, however, there will be unanimous agreement that one Pretty Yende is probably the best thing to have ever come from there. 

A distinctly colonial town that could pass off as another Graaff Reinet or Colesberg with buildings that owe their origins to the Voortrekkers, the early Dutch settlers who made their way up there when relations were strained between Boer, Briton and all of the indigenous African tribes. Named for the Boer leader Piet Retief, who was slain along with his party when the Zulu king Dingaan gave that immortalised instruction; “Kill the wizards!” before undergoing a name change, becoming eMkhondo in 2010. Iron is mined here. Timber also flourishes, and, with a glorious rendition of its own Moederkerk (the Dutch Reformed Church), it is also an incubator of the common South African everydays and contrasts. 

One could marvel at the tarred roads lined by old, upkept colonial buildings; enjoy a good glass of wine at a steakhouse; buy some decent incense at the Bangladeshi store; have a pamphleteer slip you the details of a sangoma supposedly capable of bringing back a lost love and you’d be forgiven for thinking of it as just about what small towns tend to look like everywhere in the world. 

A colonial building in eMkhondo. Image: Wikipedia

Moments later, the surrounding townships and villages will soon slap you out of your swoon. Longdrop outhouses are scattered behind the tin shanties that many have come to call home. Badly-worn roads with potholes – if you’re lucky to be on one that has been paved to begin with – that become hazardous to drive on when it’s raining. 

Schools tend to be of the uniform, overcrowded variety where the child who is able to rise above the circumstances becomes something that an entire nation marvels at. A handful, like rapper Ntokozo Mdluli (known as K.O among the faithful) have done exactly that, but Yende has commendably revved things up a notch.

We must confess our dimwittedness here at eParkeni having only caught wind of the opera singer just this year, when it was announced that she was amongst the cream selected to perform at the coronation of King Charles III on May 6. 

Sies!

So much for calling ourselves a media platform!

Where had we been when this lady has seemingly been everywhere; from the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert; gracing the biggest theatres in the world; recording a few albums to which The New York Times have raved; “A gracefulness that can seem decidedly divine seems to radiate from Ms. Yende.” In this European discipline, mostly dominated by white faces, Yende has stuck out as an unexpected phenomenon from the most obscure of places.

Fortune, it would appear, has never been too far from Yende whose international debut seems so embellished it couldn’t possibly be true. In 2013, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, she was called in as an understudy to take on the part of Countess Adele in Rossini’s “Le Comte Ory” when another singer had suddenly taken ill. The story goes that at this performance she had tripped and taken a bad fall yet somehow dug deep and ultimately put on a show that announced to all in sundry that a new diva had arrived.

The songstress in her element on stage. Image: Prettyyende.com

The rest, as they say, is history. The venues she’s performed in are the playground of the elite, visited by the most discerning ears of this sophisticated genre of music. The names she has worked with follow similar suit but don’t take our word for it; see for yourself on YouTube, Yende chirping La Traviata Sempre libera inside the Royal Opera House. Chirping, yes, ’cause only birds have ever enjoyed the right to sing so beautifully. As far back as 2014, at the Richard Tucker Gala, a lily-white orchestra behind her, she serenades the audience in a performance that garners rousing applause. It’s beautiful, that moment when you’re saying to yourself, wow, that lady is actually one of our own. 

The videos are manifold, but there is one recurring theme; not only is Yende exceptionally talented but one takes for granted just how resolute one has to be to stand up there and – as one commentor notes on YouTube – sing in a coherent diction. Easy to miss that part if you don’t consider that some of this music was written by Europeans for nobles and aristocrats and in languages that the average Black child has never heard. You could have the most beautiful operatic voice but when you are unfortunate not have come from the greener side of the tracks, that could so easily count against you. Right there is when you begin to appreciate how much sacrifice the songstress has put in to mingle, as she does, with the cream of the crop. For one she has been living in Milan for some time, presumably to avail herself to the most accomplished coaches in voice training as well as foreign tongues.

Among her many accolades is the Order of Ikhamanga, and come King Charles’ coronation, writes Wayne Muller in The Conversation, “when Yende’s voice soars in the vast hallowed space of the 13-th century Westminster Abbey, it will be a historical and huge moment, and her voice will shatter the glass enclosures of yet another space of exclusion.” Certainly that is a moment that all South Africans can look forward to but in the meantime it would be befitting to glance in our own communities for the would-be Pretty Yendes who were never afforded the opportunities to own up to their God-given talents. Startling voices that, unexplored to their full potential, wound-up dissipating out on the streets, in taverns and everywhere else where their gifted owners – if they were lucky – got nothing but a “thank you” and nothing else.

The Underdogs who would be Queens

Nolwethu Mphemba doing what only comes naturally. Image: Supplied

Without even straining my brain, I can think of at least one such person. Glass-shattering soprano, a passion for singing and an all-round great personality. Nolwethu Mphemba by name and she’s been singing since she was this high. Members of the local Apostolic Church are all too familiar with her voice and how it can jolt the most insipid congregant into rapturous praise. When a traditional ceremony is going South because the singing is below par, she’s been known, especially with her two big sisters in tow, to promptly ignite fire to the dying ambers. This may sound like we’re heaping praises to force a story but it’s precisely because of people like her that we are working towards a YouTube channel so that you, Dear Reader, may decide for yourself. Truth of the matter is that Colesberg is blessed with so much singing talent that it might be easy to take the truly gifted ones for granted because there are just so many of them.

Nowadays, Nolwethu imparts her skills to the youngsters at Colesberg Primary School. She hasn’t been doing this for long but because the folk here at Kuyasa Township know each other by name, parents take comfort in the knowledge that her children are in the competent hands of a Mphemba. Still, one must wonder how far she may have gone if there was truly any semblance of justice in this world.

With Nolwethu’s arrival, the awards start to flow in for Colesberg Primary. Image: Supplied

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