Abel Selaocoe on Hymns of Bantu

The trailblazing South African cellist and vocalist Abel Selaocoe came to widespread attention in 2022, when his debut album Where is Home / Hae Ke Kae prompted The Arts Desk to hail him as 'a star in the making' and BBC Music Magazine to applaud his 'spontaneous, mercurial creativity'. Weaving pieces by Bach, Platti and Dall’Abaco together with his own compositions and South African hymns, the recording went on to win a Classical Without Borders prize at the Opus Klassik Awards as well as the Newcomer category at the BBC Music Magazine Awards the following year.

Released tomorrow on Warner Classics, Selaocoe's sophomore album Hymns of Bantu is a continuation of his mission to 'allow Bach to sit next to overtones and the world of throat singing', presenting traditional music from Southern African countries alongside the Sarabande from Bach's Cello Suite No. 6 and a mesmerising riff on Marin Marais's 'Les voix humaines'. I sat down with Abel earlier this month to find out more about his roots, how his extraordinary improvisational skills were born out of having to 'make do' with scarce musical resources as a child, how he came to view Manchester as a second home, and some of the experiences which have shaped his pursuit of 'sonic open-mindedness'...

Hymns of Bantu encompasses such a broad range of styles and sounds - how did you draw them all together?

Bantu goes through so many different countries - all the way from West to East, and right down to South Africa. I only took a portion of that, looking at South Africa itself and Southern African countries like Namibia: I wanted to find music that has a universal prayer-like quality, which took me back to some of the hymns I’ve sung since I was a child. Then as a cellist I had to find the thread which would connect it with the Western classical tradition of choral singing, and for me that was the world of beautiful four-part harmony. It’s very different music, but we still share the concept of different voices singing together.

Did those two musical traditions exist alongside one another for you in childhood?

I was born in a township called Sebokeng, just south of Johannesburg, and my brother Sammy was basically the musical leader in that community. Instead of pursuing something academic he decided to study the bassoon, and he pulled me right into his world; he even helped me to choose my own instrument when I was old enough. He took me along to a music school in Soweto called ACOSA [African Cultural Organisation of South Africa], which was an outreach programme that allowed children from different backgrounds to learn classical music. I think the biggest reason for doing that was to occupy the space for children that can otherwise become filled with negative influences - my parents believed in the idea that if we were kept busy, we were kept out of trouble!

Sammy always made sure that when we were given our instruments we didn’t just do what was prescribed for them on the syllabus, but also found ways of bringing in our own culture. We took our instruments to different churches, played in a lot of cultural and religious ceremonies and tried to fit our voices in there. It was quite unusual to be playing some of our instruments in those kinds of environments, but after a while it was generally accepted: people began to realise that Western classical instruments could have a place in African music, and vice versa.

A bit later on, I got a scholarship to a boys' school in Johannesburg called St John's College, which was the beginning of getting access to things the other township children would never have had. My brother didn’t get a scholarship himself, but he helped me climb that ladder so one of us could end up having access to recordings and learning materials. It changed my entire life, and that’s when I knew that music can be the way out of the situation that we’re in…

Your previous album was titled Where Is Home? - is it fair to say that the UK has become something of a second home for you these days? 

When I was 17, I auditioned for many different schools in Norway and the UK, and I ended up in Manchester, where I still live. I was looking for a place that had high standards but also a lot of kindness - I was a bit afraid of getting swallowed up by that really intense classical music culture, and I felt my personality would be battered by it. 

Whenever you move to a new place you ask yourself whether the people will have the same ideals as some of the people at home; I’d read up about the North of England and I got the impression that there might be some common ground there…For instance, greeting people when you’re out and about is such a big deal back home, and when I did that in London I just got blank stares! 

As soon as I arrived in Manchester, I could sense an openness and friendliness, especially at the Royal Northern College of Music, so I went to study there and never really left. Some of the musicians are people I studied alongside at the RNCM, but others are people I met outside of that institution who were keen to learn music in a way that was very different from the classical system.

Improvisation seems to be an integral part of those 'different ways of making music' which you describe - we don't have so many opportunities to explore that in standard classical repertoire...

It’s found its way into so many different life situations, but I think it started with how we made music at home: we had to ‘make do’ a lot, to find ways to create around Not Having, and that needed plenty of improvisation. It even fed into learning some classical music: we didn’t have access to much sheet-music, so I would get a cassette and tape-record whatever cello concerto was on the radio station, and that would tide me over until I could get my hands on a score. I think that was an experience that allowed my ears to be quite malleable from an instrumental perspective, trying to figure out how to get those sounds from my cello without having something there in front of me on the page.

And improvisation is just such an instinctive, integral part of my culture: we’ve always sung and always danced, and all of that requires a creative impulse where nobody tells you what to do. That freedom permeated my musical world from the beginning - I’ve always wanted to create sounds without following a set of rules, and I think the ceremonial music in my culture really allowed that.

Later, I got to know some fantastic musicians who completely embraced that: I met incredible drummers from the Ivory Coast who spoke a totally different language, which really fascinated me and made me want to be a part of it. I asked myself whether it would be possible to translate the African violin language to the cello, and that seemed like the most inspiring endeavour for the rest of my life…It’s probably going to give me a lot of grey hairs!

You use overtone singing to great effect on Hymns of Bantu and on Where Is Home? - how does that work on a technical level, and is it something you learned as a child?

Overtone singing comes from so many different places. I’ve realised that people often associate it with Mongolia, but also there's a South African version called Umkolo (which is mostly sung by women) and another version from Tanzania. It’s basically using your normal voice but relaxing your vocal cords so much that they dip into the lower octave without taking your actual range to that place. I wanted to incorporate it into my music because it felt like a kind of spiritual inhalation, so I went to learn with people who’d been doing it all their lives. But I wanted to do it in a very contemporary way: I’ve always tried to achieve a kind of sonic open-mindedness where traditional African elements, classical and contemporary music can all co-exist.

We also hear you using your body (and the body of the cello) as a percussive instrument a lot: is that technique drawn from traditional music in South Africa?

That way of playing doesn’t actually feature much in African string music: I took a lot of it from playing contemporary music by the likes of Simon Steen-Andersen. I’m still very much experimenting with ways of really playing outside of the body of the cello and translating African rhythms and styles onto that.

I believe that nearly all musical instruments aspire to sound like the human voice in some way, and drums and percussion instruments are all connected strongly with language. So much of what I write is literally related to our speech-patterns at home, including the lengths of phrases, the tonal inflections, and the click consonants that we use in Khoisan and some Bantu languages. That’s so natural to me that I can’t even remember learning how to do the clicks: I just remember being able to recite poems that used them a lot when I was very young. We like alliteration in our language – it’s a big form of expression in writing poetry and in composing music. 

The album also features Giovanni Sollima's Cello Concerto: how did the two of you meet, and what attracts you to his music?

He’s one of those huge legends that walked into my life in a very unexpected way. He was playing a concert in Manchester, and my teacher said ‘You have to play for this guy, even if it’s just for five minutes – I’ll organise a lesson’. I waited about five hours for him to rock up, but I caught him when he came back to collect his cello! I think he shares my sense of the instrument being a tool rather than something weighed down with historical baggage. He showed me ways to explore things I’d been dreaming about: the percussiveness of the cello and also making improvisation about free rein rather than another type of learned behaviour. With a lot of improvisation - be it jazz or other genres - you have to learn certain patterns, but Sollima had this enviable way of not caring about the rules. I think our encounter really opened my mind to putting the cello in risky but beautiful situations. He also writes extremely beautiful music: his Cello Concerto is the most lyrical and gorgeous thing I’ve ever come across. 

What do you have planned to mark the release of the album in terms of live events?

We’re having quite a big launch at Troxy in East London at the end of March- it’s going to be a huge get-together of all the musicians on the album. It was a very communal project, so there’s a massive string section, percussionists from the Ivory Coast and Senegal, a pianist from Argentina and a bassist from Ireland, all coming together to celebrate what we created together. 

Hymns of Bantu is released tomorrow on Warner Classics. Abel performs at Troxy in East London on March 26th.