Sibusile Xaba Open Letter To Adoniah

'Open Letter To Adoniah' is one half of the debut double album by Sibusile Xaba.

A lynchpin in South Africa's new generation of jazz musicians, KwaZulu-Natal-born guitarist and vocalist Sibusile Xaba has all the makings of an acoustic guitar master. With a vocal style that is part dreamscaping and part ancestral invocation, Xaba divines as opposed to plainly singing. Combined with a guitar style that is rooted in expressive picking, Xaba's music shatters the confines of genre, taking only the fundamentals from mentors such as Madala Kunene and Dr Philip Tabane and imbuing these with a mythology and improvisational intensity all of his own.

'Open Letter to Adoniah' is an album reverent of life and its connectedness to a higher source. The music emanates from dreams revealed to Xaba over consecutive days and most of the album was recorded live in the mountains of Magaliesberg outside Johannesburg in the winter of 2016.

With percussionists Thabang Tabane and Moahanganai Magagula, the trio coalesces both geographic and spiritual influences, hinting at Maskandi (a music style dominant in Xaba’s native KwaZulu-Natal) and the improvisational culture of South Africa's jazz avant garde. Collectively, the musicians remold these influences, situating them within rhythms that span the African Continent. Thabang Tabane’s influence over the project gives it a spiritual sensibility allusive to the Malombo Music his father, the legendary Dr Philip Tabane, originated in the late 1960s.