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South African rapper Sho Madjozi is a bold and colourful presence in pop culture, as famous for her catchy lyrics as for using traditional clothing and dance in a fresh way.
The musician, actress and poet is also one of very few young South African artists working in a minority language, Xitsonga. With 12 official languages in South Africa, Xitsonga is the first language of only about 4.5 percent of the population, mostly in the rural northern province of the country called Limpopo.
The Tsonga people also live in neighbouring Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Eswatini.
Yet, in 2019, “village girl” Sho Madjozi burst onto the world stage with her hit song John Cena, winning a BET award in the US for Best International Newcomer. By 2021 she had established herself as best female artist at the South African Music Awards.
But Sho Madjozi is about more than music. She’s also about setting trends — through reinventing Tsonga costume, hairstyles and dance. She’s done this in a way that helps shape her region’s cultural identity.
Cultural identity is not something that’s fixed. Identities change, transcending time, place and history. Sho Madjozi shows how this happens when she mixes the authentic culture of the Tsonga people with popular global culture to produce a unique — or hybrid — identity and performance style.
“We recently published a research paper that analyses this. We place her as an artist whose work demonstrates a fascinating interface between the “authentic” (Tsonga culture) and the “hybrid” (an innovative new voice, with innovation and novelty being central to the global culture industries),” she said.
“We conclude that by merging popular and traditional cultures, Sho Madjozi is the latest in a long line of young African artists who help shape youth culture identity. In the process she shines a light on a lesser-known ethnic group, keeping traditional knowledge alive so that others may learn from it and be inspired by it.” — The Conversation
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