Crowd Pleaser
From Soweto to the States, Britain and Colombia, violinist Simiso Radebe settles in the Mother City, splitting his time between the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra and a head-turning busking act.
MUSIC / BULLETIN / 21.11.23
Read time / 7 mins
Mikael wears his take on an office t-shirt in a formal mid-weight cotton pique. On the blind behind him is the FIELDS brand totem, designed by Daniel Ting Chong.
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Creative Director
Writer
DANIËL GELDENHUYS
Illustrator and Photographer
KOOS GROENEWALD
[01] Koos Groenewald photographed Simiso after a Cape Philharmonic Orchestra rehearsal at Artscape in June.
Simiso Radebe’s music career in Cape Town has played out over various episodes of residential upheaval. His new apartment has served him well, except for the time the elevator was being serviced and, back from a busking session at a nearby shopping mall in the southern suburbs, he had to carefully haul his violin and amplifier up seven flights of stairs. Simiso left Durban in 2021 to join the Mother City Philharmonic Orchestra, a now defunct project haunted by legal squabbles that left him unpaid and unable to pay rent. The move to his current building was fast tracked by a rainstorm that seeped through the light fixtures in his last rental: Simiso had to excuse himself from a Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra rehearsal to evacuate. Recounting these events safely on the seventh floor, the conversation is derailed by the click-clack woosh of the Metrorail outside. Does this quirk annoy him? “No,” the violinist replies. “I love it. It reminds me that I’m still alive. Get up and do something with your life.”
[01] Koos Groenewald photographed Simiso after a Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra rehearsal at Artscape in June.
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Extra music stands on standby outside CPO's rehearsal space at Artscape.
Koos also illustrated Simiso during his CPO rehearsal. “I’m enjoying my life, musically.” Simiso says. “It’s making sense." In the voice note below, sent from a recent busking performance, Simiso plays Eine kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart.
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Extra music stands on standby outside CPO's rehearsal space at Artscape.
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Koos also illustrated Simiso during his CPO rehearsal. “I’m enjoying my life, musically.” Simiso says. “It’s making sense.”
Not that Simiso has ever lacked motivation. As an eight-year old boy, the youngest of four siblings growing up in Diepkloof, Soweto, he had a formative experience watching his teenage cousin play the violin. That night, in a vivid dream, Simiso was an expert violinist: “It was so real,” he remembers to this day. His mother wasted no time signing him up to his cousin’s music programme at the local community hall. After a gruelling six-month theory-based initiation, Simiso finally picked up the violin and never looked back.
Before long, Simiso moved up the road to the Buskaid Soweto String Project, a charitable trust founded by the British orchestral violinist Rosemary Nalden, who packed up her life in London at the age of 48 and moved to a freshly democratic South Africa in 1997. With his Twinkle Twinkle Little Star audition, Rosemary identified Simiso as an exceptional talent, providing him the tools he needed to excel: In addition to a classic education, Rosemary would encourage her students to develop their sound by incorporating elements of their personal culture. “Once we’ve acquired those [classical] skills,” Simiso explains, “we enhance them and make them our own. It’s traditional music, but then on the violin.” A combination of talent and unwavering commitment propelled Simiso to prodigy status: at 13, he caught his first flight to the United States. It was the first of many international Buskaid performances.
“The energy flow is just totally different,” Simiso observes, excited by music’s power to change the mood in a public space.
Simiso describes the Buskaid musicians’ role as cultural ambassadors, teaching their unique elixir of musical expression to foreigners as a basis for a collaborative performance to round off the trip. In Colombia, Buskaid created what Simiso describes as a fusion of baroque music with traditional djembe drumming and contemporary dance. “South Africans can relate to Colombia,” he says. Beyond the sunny weather conditions (“Those people, they tan!”), there’s a cultural common ground. “It’s rhythm,” Simiso explains. “We’ve got similar rhythmic gestures. And our rhythm of life, it’s similar.” The resulting performance was received with feverish enthusiasm. “People love it. Some are in tears. Some of them want the actual t-shirt that you are wearing, which after the show is sweaty as fuck,” he laughs, “but they want it.”
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Simiso describes his violin as delicate. “You guard it as your own sort of child.”
Simiso’s appointment as a permanent first violinist at the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2022, after more than a year of performing as an ad hoc player, feels creatively affirming. “Everything that I hoped for, it’s working out,” he says.
Despite a distinction in his Grade 8 Violin Practical (the highest level, completed during his Grade 11 high school year) and subsequent graduation from the University of London’s Royal Academy of Music, the ability to support himself as an adult musician in his home country feels like Simiso’s greatest accomplishment. This career path defies his father’s “typical Zulu man mentality” about the violin being a feminine instrument and that a career in the arts is unrealistic. Simiso’s appointment as a permanent first violinist at the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2022, after more than a year of performing as an ad hoc player, feels creatively affirming and financially liberating. “I actually wake up thinking, ‘oh my God, I don’t know how I managed to pull this off’. Everything that I hoped for, it’s working out.”
“People love it. Some are in tears. Some of them want the actual t-shirt that you are wearing.”
Performing at malls like the V&A Waterfront is an unmatched public relations exercise: busking has booked Simiso numerous corporate and wedding gigs, and happens to be the way HOMEY’s editor in chief, Antoinette Degens, heard him play for the first time. From Buskaid’s fundraiser performances in the malls of Johannesburg to his solo act in the Western Cape’s most frequented shopping centres, busking remains an integral aspect of Simiso’s creative practice. “You don’t know how it eats me when I’m sitting around doing nothing. I’d rather go entertain people.” After our interview, Simiso sends me a video of him performing Rema and Selena Gomez’s Calm Down in Cavendish Square, stepping around his space with a cheerful theatricality that culminates in a move where he crouches to the floor, leaning back onto his right leg while kicking his left foot in and out to emphasise the track’s energetic beat. Shoppers in the background stare, mesmerised.
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Busking remains an integral aspect of Simiso’s creative practice. “When I entertain people and see them happy, I come home with a smile.” In the voice note below, Simiso plays one of his go-to contemporary busking tracks: Calm Down by Rema.
Performing at South Africa's busiest malls is an unmatched public relations exercise. “That’s the power of busking,” Simiso attests. “It opens doors.”
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Performing at South Africa's busiest malls is an unmatched public relations exercise. “That’s the power of busking,” Simiso attests. “It opens doors.”
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Busking remains an integral aspect of Simiso’s creative practice. “When I entertain people and see them happy, I come home with a smile.”
“The energy flow is just totally different,” Simiso observes, excited by music’s power to change the mood in a public space. He values the connection busking establishes with an everyday audience: It’s more intimate than the formal CPO concert setting. “When I entertain people and see them happy, then I’m happy. I come home with a smile.” Zamile Mbatha, Simiso’s girlfriend who, at the time of writing is six months pregnant with their first child, is his most committed audience member, assisting with bookings wherever possible and spearheading his bourgeoning Instagram account. The role of momager, should she be so inclined, feels like a natural fit. Does Simiso envision his child as a future collaborator? He seems more concerned with finding them the perfect music teacher, but doesn’t believe a parent should force their professional or creative inclinations onto their children. “I’m thinking about nappies at the moment,” he laughs. —
Violinist