Podcast with Napo Masheane, a Black Woman with a Voice

by Victor Dlamini on November 22nd, 2007

Napo Masheane has carved out a path all her own on the way to a career that brings together music, writing, poetry, spoken word performances, and other excursions into theatre and production.

Her unique poetic oeuvre is marked by a melding of the traditional poem/song forms of the BaSotho with the free-flowing beat of Hip Hop – and yet her work still pays homage to “conventional” verse. With the publication of Caves Speak in Metaphors – her first anthology of poetry and essays – Napo has brought the promise of her stage performances onto the page, and it says something of her powers as a writer that the poems can actually be read with as much pleasure and meaning as is conveyed when she performs them.

Napo’s career as a poet and performer is complemented by her strong sense of how staging and lighting can influence a performance. It is no surprise to discover that when she read for her Diploma in Speech and Drama she also took a course in Lighting, such is her sensitivity to how light can affect the tone and mood of each moment on stage.

Whenever Napo Masheane begins one of her performances, it is not to the audience that she utters her first words, but to the long line of Masheanes, whose family praise names she recites with such eloquence that many imagine the poet is already breaking into her stride. She was born in Soweto, but it was in the Free State that she gained her awareness of her inclination towards the arts. The region’s rich cultural heritage has since provided Napo with a colourful poetic canvas from which to paint her vividly imagined pieces.

As she calls out the names that trace her lineage and ancestry, this prelude reveals Napo’s background and experience as a stage performer, and her understanding of measured delivery as a spoken word artist. More than anyone else on the spoken word circuit, Napo has the knack of delivering performances that mine the entire spectrum of emotion. They reflect her acute sensitivity to the various hues and tones that can be created by words when they are delivered with an enchanting whisper, or a secret incantation, or a celebratory flourish.

This dreadlocked artist consciously celebrates herself as a “black woman with a voice”, emphasising that she cherishes her ability to recite her own lines when she is on stage, without having to rely on narratives authored by others. She agrees with the notion that her success has given her a certain level visibility, which she has used to venture into new areas with confidence.

At the same time, Napo looks back with pride at the pioneering work that she and the other members of Feela Sistah! Spoken Word Collective brought to South Africa’s arts scene in 2003. She believes that it created sustainable opportunities for women to follow literary careers. She tells me that “movement” – investing in creation and creative progress – is something that she seeks in her own life, a dynamic state that she believes all black women should adopt.

It was her creation of the unforgettable piece, “My Bum is Genetic, Deal with It” – a one woman show – that signaled her ability to bring humour to a highly emotive subject. In our conversation, Napo recounts her experiences whilst visiting Germany, when a group of young German girls followed her around a department store, mimicking her walk and mocking her about her bum. Once she had got over her humiliation and anger, she turned her creative attentions to this “tour de force” of a show to reclaim her right to see herself in her own image, and to celebrate her physique as a beautiful fact of life.

Napo’s poetry conveys her sense of the many connections that she believes indicate a common ancestry amongst the various peoples of Africa. Whether she sings about her own beloved family, or the broader Sotho peoples, or, for instance, the Samburu of East Africa, it is clear that a visceral sense of Pan-Africanism feeds Napo’s imagination. It is her great gift that she is able to weave social and cultural tapestries into her poetry in such a way that each piece is at once an original poem and a vehicle for travel.

Napo has performed in many countries, across the African continent as well as in Europe and the United States. Our chat was conducted at Xarra Books in Newtown, Johannesburg. Please tune into the Victor Dlamini Literary Podcast:

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