SA: Desire Marea to debut new album at Market Theatre on 13 May

The live debut, which will feature special guests, follows the release of the eight-track album in April. It will feature a performance by Marea and his 12-piece band. Tickets to the event are available here.

The release of the album was preceded by the single ‘Be Free’, whose video explores queer love within the hyper-masculine world of taxi gangs in South Africa. Other notable songs on the album include ‘Ezulwini’, ‘Makhukhu’, ‘Mfula’ and ‘Rah’, and eight-minute epic featuring Zöe Modiga.

On the Romance of Being was recorded live in studio with a line-up of accomplished jazz and experimental musicians including Sibusiso ‘Mash’ Mashiloane, Sbu Zondi, Portia Sibiya, Andrei van Wyk and Sanele Ngubane.

Reviewing the album for The Quietus, Jeremy Allen writes: “Listening to On the Romance of Being feels like submerging yourself in some empyrean realm with its own weather system raining blood, sweat and tears. The gravity is heavier, the colours brighter and more swirly; the scenery, as opulent as your brain can muster and then more so.“

In the past two years, the Amandawe-based artist trained as a sangoma, a traditional Nguni spiritual healer, with his latest album immersed in the communal, ceremonial and healing qualities of music.

“In my work as a sangoma, ancient songs and drumming sequences are used to invoke spirits who live in me so I enter into a trance state,” Marea says. “In my work as a musician, I heal people using music. It’s a different kind of medicine but one in which I often have to channel different spirits, different truths and the essence of light.” 

The album’s artwork, an oil piece, was created by Athi-Patra Ruga and embodies eroticism as a life force. “The erotics of his intellect are evident in how we are beckoned to ‘levitate’, stripping old skin and entering new bodies and plains,” Ruga says. “This access point is what led me to celebrate this transition. I wanted to be of service to document the processes they went through in their ukuvuma [admission] and also the seductive instructions that are in the lyrics.”

On the Romance of Being is available for streaming and download here.