For Thando Zide, music was never simply a form of entertainment. In the house where her father was raised, it belonged to intlombe, spiritual gatherings where singing, ululation and drumming created a space that felt larger than the room itself.
That upbringing taught Zide to treat her voice as a responsibility rather than something to take for granted. She says music was about “allowing God room and giving him reign.”
Her late grandfather and two aunts were traditional healers. By the time Zide was old enough to understand what was happening around her, she had already learned that music could serve as a doorway, not merely a performance.
“Intlombe is more of a spiritual gathering amongst healers than it is a social gathering,” she explains. “Music always registered in my brain as something that had a great role in creating an atmosphere that almost always broke the veil between the physical and the spiritual.”
Years later, she describes herself in similarly spiritual terms: “I am a singer-songwriter from South Africa, whose music found and followed her until she surrendered to the call, and is now undertaking the journey with gentleness, honour and gratitude.”
Quick facts
- Thando Zide was born and raised in Soweto.
- Her debut album, Ku Ngawe, contains 11 tracks.
- The record explores romantic, familial, spiritual and communal connection.
- Msaki, Manana and Ami Faku appear among the album’s collaborators.
- Usana, featuring Msaki, nearly became too personal to release.
Born in Soweto, Zide moved between her mother’s and father’s homes until high school. Growing up between Tswana and Xhosa cultures, she believes, expanded her creative outlook.
“I’d like to think that I’m made up of a myriad of cultures,” she says. Exposure to “a school of cultures” gave her the flexibility to explore and recreate without placing a narrow limit on her artistic work.
Her parents first met at choir rehearsals, but Zide stresses that a career in music was not an obvious destination. In fact, her family once worried that she was the relative least interested in music.
She went on to study social work, a field she remains deeply passionate about. Although she acknowledges that another version of her life existed outside music, she says the person she has become now feels “intended, and right.”
The call she could no longer ignore
Her supposed lack of interest in music changed during her second year at university. While she had always written and created songs alongside her social-work ambitions, pushing away that part of herself eventually became impossible.
“Ignoring the call became unbearable,” Zide says. She had to admit how complete she felt while making music, and could no longer look past that feeling.
Rather than abandoning her studies, she found that social work strengthened her songwriting. The discipline developed her patience and curiosity about people, qualities she now draws on when interpreting the ideas and situations behind her lyrics.
That sensitivity runs through Ku Ngawe, her 11-track debut album. The project examines connection in several forms, including romance, family, spirituality and community.
Of those themes, family proved the most difficult to put on paper. Zide says writing about her personal life felt especially exposing because she values keeping her private world private.
Working alongside Msaki, Manana and Ami Faku helped her take greater creative risks. She had to accept the role of vulnerability and connection in songwriting, allowing herself and the featured artists to meet and create at the level the music required.
For listeners who discover the album without knowing anything about its creator, Zide hopes the music communicates that she has allowed something larger than herself to guide and work through her.
She also wants people to feel ownership of the songs: music they can sit with, feel through and live alongside.
Zide has previously described her writing as more aspirational than openly vulnerable. Ku Ngawe, however, has begun to challenge that approach.
The album showed her that concealing too much can limit the craft. She is not suggesting that every part of herself must be revealed, because some things remain exclusively hers, but she now believes certain hidden pieces carry meaning worth hearing.
Usana, her collaboration with Msaki, almost became one of those songs that stayed hidden because it felt so revealing. By the time she made it, though, Zide had accepted that the album would invite people further into her world than before.
The question was no longer whether the song should come out. It was whether she was ready for listeners to know that much about her after hearing it.
What her grandfather might hear
Asked what her late grandfather, one of the healers who shaped her earliest relationship with music, might recognise in Ku Ngawe, Zide answers without hesitation.
“He’d probably recognise the yearning that I carry with me.”
The admission offers a glimpse of the private person behind her composed public presence. Zide says she leads a quiet life and is often silent, but she is also constantly laughing because she finds many things funny.
She describes laughter as deeply healing for her.
The value she will protect
With her career still developing but clearly moving toward larger possibilities, Zide identifies integrity as the principle she refuses to surrender.
She is still learning what integrity means in the music business and in the wider world, but she does not want to compromise the values she has already built. She prefers working with people who are trustworthy and genuine, while remaining fully herself.
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