On a recent evening at the Bridgewater Hall here, Abel Selaocoe surveyed the audience from his cello podium. Holding his bow aloft like a staff, the musician asked attendees to add their voices to the strutting groove sweeping the auditorium.<\/p>\n
This was The Oracle, a touring program built around Selaocoe\u2019s multiplicity: During the concert, the South African artist, 30, best known for his work on the cello, moved swiftly between roles as a singer, improviser, section player and master of ceremonies. During the evening, Selaocoe performed with the chamber group Manchester Collective, covering Stravinsky, Vivaldi and Mica Levi, and with his trio, Chesaba, adding influences from groove-centered improvisation and sounds from across the African continent. In a classical music industry that encourages performers to be either\/or, Selaocoe has chosen both \u2014 and more.<\/p>\n
Themes of belonging, journey and history punctuate Selaocoe\u2019s debut album, \u201cWhere is Home (Hae Ke Kae),\u201d which arrives Friday on Warner Classics. The genre-blending album harnesses an intimate emotional energy that is disrupted by regular fiery outbursts, as on the hymn-like \u201cIbuyile I\u2019Africa \/ Africa is Back\u201d and the spiky \u201cKa Bohaleng \/ On the Sharp Side.\u201d (The album\u2019s name and many of the track titles include translations in African languages, including Sotho and Zulu.)<\/p>\n
In recent years, Selaocoe\u2019s ability to float above rigid genre categories has resulted in a growing influence among a classical music community increasingly conscious of its deference to longstanding traditions. In 2021, he curated a concert at the BBC Proms, one of the world\u2019s largest classical music festivals, and he is an artist in residence at London\u2019s Southbank Center for its upcoming season. Even as he is embraced by these British institutional spaces, his additive approach is deeply rooted in his homeland\u2019s rich musical traditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cSouth African tradition doesn\u2019t draw these hard lines between performance music, participative music, music for daily activities,\u201d Gwen Ansell, the author of \u201cSoweto Blues: Jazz, Popular Music and Politics in South Africa,\u201d said in a recent video interview. Instead, music is \u201cjust part of what happens,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Born in 1992 in Sebokeng, a township south of Johannesburg, Selaocoe\u2019s journey with the cello began when he followed his older brother, Sammy, to Saturday school at the African Cultural Organization of South Africa in Soweto, another township around 30 miles away.<\/p>\n
Traveling to class on a packed train, on which passengers resorted to standing in the spaces between carriages, Selaocoe would remove the bridge of his cello, take off the endpin and put both parts in his pocket, standing with the instrument flat against his chest to take up as little space as possible. He began playing on a shared instrument, before teachers spotted his potential and gifted him his own.<\/p>\n
Growing up, his brother, who also works as a musician, \u201chad a philosophy that, if you\u2019re living in a township, in a place that doesn\u2019t have a lot of sustenance, and employment, you have to start looking really early,\u201d Selaocoe said. Selaocoe listened \u2014 though he would later come to realize the townships\u2019 own unique artistry \u2014 and at 13 won a scholarship to St John\u2019s College, a prestigious boarding school in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n
At St John\u2019s, Selaocoe dreamed of a move to Europe, and his classmates romanticized the continent as \u201cthe mecca of classical music, of musical expression,\u201d he said. After studying with the teacher Michael Masote, who was one of the most influential voices in South African classical music, Selaocoe eventually took the leap in 2010, when he enrolled at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester at 18.<\/p>\n
Despite his classical training in the cello, everything stems from singing for Selaocoe. \u201cThe voice does things my body cannot imagine, but my musicality can,\u201d he said over lunch near his home in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, a suburb south of Manchester.<\/p>\n
Selaocoe learned to sing the same way one might pick up a language in childhood: \u201cby seeing adults do it and copying them.\u201d Growing up, his parents, a domestic worker and a mechanic, taught him cultural ceremonies and church. About six years ago, a friend gave Selaocoe a grounding in umngqokolo, a form of South African overtone singing, he said, which added a new dimension to the musician\u2019s already charismatic performances.<\/p>\n
His onstage request at Bridgewater Hall for the audience to join in the performance is typical of Selaocoe\u2019s belief in the connective power of the voice. In rehearsals for a 2018 Manchester Collective show, \u201cSirocco,\u201d Selaocoe \u201cwould sing things to demonstrate to other ensemble members,\u201d Adam Szabo, the chief executive of the group, said in a recent phone interview. \u201cWe pushed him to do it in the show, something he hadn\u2019t done much before at all.\u201d Now, Szabo said, he\u2019s refined that singing in his practice, \u201cwhich is this amazing melting pot of different influences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over lunch, Selaocoe returned frequently to idea that \u201csinging is so universal.\u201d But that universality has its limits. For the music journalist and author Ansell, \u201cthe song is universal, the fact that people sing is universal, but in fact the language, the meaning, the discourse of that song, isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Selaocoe said he wanted his work to offer routes to universally felt experiences. \u201cThere are things that go beyond language, the things that are just part of the human instinct,\u201d he said. \u201cThe first one is movement \u2014 the idea of expressing with your body. Then we go even deeper into things like faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
Selaocoe\u2019s relationship to faith is multifaceted: In addition to attending Methodist and Apostolic churches, he was brought up around traditional medicinal, healing and spiritual practices. \u201cMy heart has always stayed with appeasing my ancestors \u2014 seeing if I can get in touch with them, to ask for advice,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
At Bridgewater Hall, Selaocoe channeled this history through aphoristic pronouncements, telling the audience: \u201cThe future is in the past.\u201d Connecting with the past \u2014 in and out of his music \u2014 is one way Selaocoe has explored the question posed by his album\u2019s title.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Where is home?\u2019 is no longer [just] a question of the geographical space,\u201d he said. \u201cIt can be an ideology, within artistic practice, or the people I surround myself with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Artistically, Selaocoe\u2019s current home is in improvisation, a shift confirmed when he was invited to perform with the renowned Art Ensemble of Chicago at the 2019 London Jazz Festival. That concert was a key moment \u201cin understanding that my expression doesn\u2019t always have to be prepared\u200c,\u201d he said. \u201cComing from a classical music background, preparation is almost everything.\u201d But with an improvised performance, he added, \u201cI leave the moment on\u200c \u200cstage and be like, \u2018I can never recreate what we did.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Selaocoe spends a lot of time with classical ensembles, introducing fresh approaches to groove, including techniques informed by Africa\u2019s wealth of stringed instruments. Does he meet resistance to his ideas? \u201cYes,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I think it\u2019s important that you choose your collaborators well. As soon as you have curiosity in the room, that\u2019s 70 percent of the job done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Selaocoe has also paid attention to how his performances are marketed. \u201cIf I\u2019m coming to play a sonata, they\u2019ll call me a classical cellist,\u201d he said. \u201cBut if I play something else, I\u2019m no longer that \u2014 I\u2019m just, like, an African musician.\u201d<\/p>\n
His dream, he said, is for his mixed-genre, groove-orientated approach to become intuitive. To be able \u201cto walk into a room, set a groove and people understand what to do with their bows, rather than be told,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you put it on a piece of paper, it looks dead simple,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd it really isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The classically trained South African cellist draws on musical traditions from across the globe for his debut album, \u201cWhere is Home (Hae Ke Kae).\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12963,"featured_media":18220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,31],"tags":[7,14,32],"class_list":{"0":"post-18223","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"category-music","9":"tag-apie-project","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"yoast_head":"\n