UNITING voice

South African cellist-singer-composer Abel Selaocoe’s genre-defying performances have earned him several recent awards and a recording contract with Warner Classics. Tom Stewart meets the Manchester-based musician following his powerful BBC Proms 2021 debut

Abel Selaocoe (centre) on stage at the Royal Albert Hall with Simo Lagnawi’s Gnawa London collective for the Proms

BBC/CHRIS CHRISTODOULOU

What first fills the air of London’s vast Royal Albert Hall is the burnished sound of Abel Selaocoe’s voice, not his cello. Selaocoe, who was born in South Africa, opens this packed-out performance at the BBC Proms with a long, sighing phrase in Zulu: just a few pitches that begin high in his voice before descending into its deepest reaches. Here we meet another of his many talents – mastery of umngqokolo overtone singing, Selaocoe manipulating his throat to add a second pitch above the first so that his words acquire an ember-like glow. A third layer arrives with the cello, obscured at first low down in a sonic landscape populated by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, chamber choir Bantu Voices and Chesaba, a trio Selaocoe formed in 2016 with British bass guitarist Alan Keary and Ivorian percussionist Sidiki Dembele. But before long, Selaocoe has raced to the top of his fingerboard, combining vocal gymnastics with technical and expressive virtuosity on the cello as if it were the most natural thing in the world, not a near-superhuman feat of coordination and control.

‘I wrote this for my nephew,’ Selaocoe says, introducing the first piece, Qhawe (‘Hero’, with the ‘q’ pronounced as a click). ‘Children have a whole lot of imagination we just don’t have. It’s a beautiful world to live in.’ There’s nothing childlike about Selaocoe’s skill or irresistible charisma, but over the next two hours, with surprises at every turn, he draws the audience into a world not many of us could have imagined. Most of the evening’s music has been written by Selaocoe himself, though the sounds of other African cultures also feature. From the continent’s northernmost tip, for example, a guest appearance by the cymbals, castanets and guembri –a type of Moroccan lute – performed by the Gnawa London collective, founded by Moroccan musician Simo Lagnawi, entrances not only the audience but also the other players with the swirling sounds of Sufi Islam.

Perhaps the most curious moment of all, however, comes when the orchestra alone (conducted by Clark Rundell) plays the stately, almost ponderous ‘Entrée d’Abaris’ from Rameau’s rarely heard opera Les Boréades. Surely it’s hard to imagine something less like Selaocoe’s Zawose, which precedes it –a riotous ‘thank you’ to Tanzania for its support of South African dissidents during the struggle against apartheid. Selaocoe disagrees: ‘The concert was an example of mukete, which is a celebration of different things and different cultures all at once,’ he tells me afterwards. ‘When we go to a mukete in South Africa it’s hectic. We’re celebrating, we’re grieving, there are cows being slaughtered. But the Rameau is more than that, even; it’s about finding refuge, which is such an important part of my work, and a connection between the improvisation that’s at the heart of music of Africa and of the Baroque.’

Selaocoe combined vocal gymnastics with expressive virtuosity on the cello during his Proms performance

BBC/CHRIS CHRISTODOULOU

Selaocoe, who at the time of writing is shortlisted for the 2021 Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist Award, has carried the same ideas across to his latest project, a forthcoming debut recording on Warner Classics. ‘I’m developing that sense of looking for refuges, be they spiritual, political or to do with community,’ he says, explaining that the disc will explore South African concepts of solitude and togetherness with music from a wide range of styles and cultures. The news of his signing to Warner this year came shortly after he received a prestigious Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for composition and joins the PRS Foundation’s Power Up scheme. Clearly, Selaocoe’s star is in the ascendant.

Born in 1992, Selaocoe grew up in Sebokeng, a township in the industrial outskirts of Johannesburg. ‘I’m a freedom child,’ he says, referring to the name given to the generation of South Africans born during the country’s transition to democracy. ‘It was a time of mishmash. There was a new feeling of possibility, in music as well as the rest of society. I grew up with protest songs and isicathamiya groups like Ladysmith Black Mambazo,’ he says. Isicathamiya (the ‘c’ is another click) describes a kind of a cappella choral singing Selaocoe describes as ‘post-colonial’ in the way it fuses European and traditional African elements. ‘There were people playing classical music for the first time and others who were celebrating a new era of South African jazz.’ Trumpeter Hugh Masekela and self-taught pianist and saxophonist Bheki Mseleku were important early influences, he says, but spiritual traditions also played their part. ‘Our church was a very physical place, and loud, too. People would run in circles around a big lady playing a bass drum in the middle of the room. The music there was very simple, just two chords. I loved that rhythm; it was a pre-colonial sound.’

Although he would eventually go on to study the cello in the UK, Selaocoe’s first experiences of music making came about through singing, something that comes as no surprise given the sheer elemental power of his voice. ‘You couldn’t get away from it when I was growing up,’ he says. ‘Singing has always been a part of our culture; it’s constantly evolving. We’re still singing the same protest songs, for example, but now we sing them at football matches. But when I think back, the most nourishing times for singing were at primary school. They made us sing constantly, which was a good thing. Big-up to primary schools in South Africa, in the townships.’ Later, after Selaocoe’s playing had won him a scholarship to a prestigious Johannesburg boarding school, he would combine duties as a choirboy with improvising voluntaries on the cello alongside the school organist.

‘THE MOST NOURISHING TIMES FOR SINGING WERE AT PRIMARY SCHOOL IN SOUTH AFRICA. THEY MADE US SING CONSTANTLY, WHICH WAS A GOOD THING’

Performing with Manchester Collective in 2019 for the revival of his 2018 work Sirocco

MANCHESTER COLLECTIVE/PHIL SHARP

‘PART OF MY JOB IS GIVING PEOPLE PERMISSION TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES, TO EXPLORE WHAT THEY THOUGHT WERE THEIR LIMITS. WHEN YOU OPEN UP, OTHERS AROUND YOU CAN DO THE SAME’

During the final decades of the apartheid regime, many cultural and political forces around the world turned their back on South Africa in protest. The flourishing of cooperation and artistic exchange that followed the introduction of majority rule brought with it a genre of music that, from the late 1990s, grew to dominate the country’s musical tastes. ‘House music was everywhere,’ Selaocoe says. ‘It had a huge influence on me; the African origins of its sound and rhythms all seemed to make sense with my growing interest in traditional music.

House is music for partying, but when we were getting to know it there was also a sense in which it felt as if we were speaking to our ancestors. We’d dance in groups and suddenly someone would jump into the middle of the circle, which sounds like they were showing off, but it wasn’t like that. They were just expressing themselves.’

From the throngs of the township church to the transcendental power of house, it’s clear that Selaocoe has never been a stranger to letting music embody the inner self. ‘Our parents would always encourage us to come out of our skin, whether we were at a party or celebrating a traditional ceremony at home,’ he explains. ‘The drive to be different from the rest was everywhere across our community.’ As anyone who has seen Selaocoe perform will know, his presence on stage is accompanied by an extraordinary degree of unselfconsciousness that radiates out into the audience. ‘Part of my job is giving people permission to express themselves, to explore what they thought were their limits. When you open up, others around you can do the same.’ Though met with initial hesitation in places, the irresistible urge to move coursed through the crowd at Selaocoe’s Proms performance, too, bringing an unusually free-flowing air to the proceedings.

‘‘It all began with my brother, who was playing music way before I really got interested,’ Selaocoe says. ‘He would bring together people from the church, the brass band, whatever, and write music for them.’ Selaocoe followed his brother to a music school in Soweto, run by the African Cultural Organisation of South Africa (Acosa). ‘It was an outreach project that got us out of the township for the weekend. The teachers were amazing; they had so much knowledge to share, but didn’t really have any resources.’ Like his brother, a bassoonist, Selaocoe started out on the recorder. His musical talent was obvious, and when he was eleven, the school suggested he take up the cello. ‘I started going to a class on Saturday where we would all share one or two cellos. I was already obsessed, learning anything I could that had a bass clef.’ Next came a cello of his own, though not without a new sense of responsibility. ‘No one else in the class was given that opportunity, so it was on me to make use of it – not to go out and play with my friends, but to practise the cello.

‘PEOPLE DIDN’T THINK OF ME AS A CELLIST. I WAS JUST THE KID WHO COULD PLAY THAT THING. THEY’D BRING ME ALONG AND I’D HAVE TO MAKE SOMETHING WORK’

‘Through music we began to meet people whose lives were very different from ours, and it dawned on us that this was our way into another world. From then on it was a case of making the best for ourselves.’ Back in Sebokeng, Selaocoe’s abilities did not go unnoticed, even if his instrument remained something of a mystery. ‘In the township, whatever the occasion was, I’d be there playing the cello. People didn’t think of me as a classical cellist, or even as a cellist at all. I was just the kid who could play that thing. They’d bring me along and I’d have to make something work. It’s just a box, after all. We didn’t grow up with classical music, so playing the cello was just another way of joining in with the culture we did have.’

Despite the blurred musical boundaries of his early years, was Selaocoe ever tempted to become a mainstream classical cellist? ‘Absolutely!’ he says. ‘One hundred per cent!’ In 2010, Selaocoe won another scholarship, this time to the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester, where the high standard of playing encouraged him to push his technical and interpretative abilities. But, he says, there was always another side to his music making. ‘When I arrived in Manchester, I was pretty sure my path was going to be that of a typical concert cellist, but as time went on my deep ancestral memory of other musics just wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t leave it behind.’ Selaocoe’s teacher in Manchester was Hannah Roberts, a former student of William Pleeth and Ralph Kirshbaum who encouraged him to follow his own path. ‘I was so lucky to have her,’ Selaocoe says. ‘She gave me a rigorous technical training and I studied all the usual classical repertoire with her, but she also told me to find my essence.’

At the RNCM, Selaocoe continued to explore folk music and other non-classical styles of string playing. ‘You have to follow what it is you really want to do,’ he says. ‘You might not be the new Rostropovich, but you’re becoming an elevated version of yourself, which is quite enough for the world to digest.’ His trio, Chesaba, which has performed at the Womad festival (World of Music, Arts and Dance), the Amsterdam Cello Biennale and with the BBC Concert Orchestra, started life during Selaocoe’s time at college, as did Manchester Collective, another group with a clear commitment to the unexpected possibilities of sound. Indeed, Manchester, where Selaocoe still lives, has remained at the heart of his creative life. ‘The scene here feels united, and the city’s small enough that it feels easy to conjure up a sense of community, which is one of the reasons I’ve stayed,’ he explains. The Oracle, his new work for Manchester Collective, produced in partnership with Opera North, will be premiered in March, following the success of Sirocco, another of his boundary-free concoctions which the group premiered in 2018.

Selaocoe: ‘I want to show that Bach, Rameau and traditional African music aren’t that different’

BEN BONOUVRIER

The pandemic may have put paid to Chesaba’s plans for a tour of South Africa, but Selaocoe is adamant the group will perform there before long: ‘Chesaba owes its spirit to South Africa. The idea of playing all these different things at once comes from the country’s blend of cultures. Taking classical music into some of those spaces would be very foreign, but I think it would be a revelation for us all. I want to show that the language is still the same, that Bach, Rameau and traditional African music aren’t really that different.’ But as the Proms concert made clear, Selaocoe’s interests in African music know no borders. ‘I would also love to travel to East Africa to learn their music from the masters there, just like I did when I came to Manchester,’ he says. ‘I still have such a long way to go to translate all these sounds into my own voice. Can I recreate them on the cello? This is what I always want to know. We’ll find out soon enough!’