Vusi grew up in the Mamelodi township, just outside of Pretoria, South Africa, where he still resides. As Vusi tells it, he grew up a happy kid and was blind to the injustices in his country. His grandmother operated a Shebeen behind their home. Due to the cultural boycott during Apartheid, black South African music was hard to come by and was banned from being played on the radio. So, they played American records in the pub. James Brown. Motown. The Commodores. And whatever South African and African recordings they could find: Mahotella Queens, Mahlatini Queens, Miriam Makeba, Dark City Sisters, Fela Kuti. Young Vusi and his neighborhood friends formed a little band of their own and started making music of their own, inspired by the recordings they heard wafting out of the Shebeen. Vusi built his first guitar from fishing line and a cooking oil can and taught himself how to play.
Vusi’s response to the 1976 Soweto Uprising was music, inspiring other musicians and listeners around him. He began to write songs of justice, of freedom, of revolution, of love, of peace and of life. He joined a poetry group, The Ancestors of Africa, and also joined the Congress of South African Writers, a group of like-minded artists and writers, including Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer who paid for Vusi’s first guitar lessons. At this point, his political activism truly began. For the “crime” of writing songs of freedom and human dignity, Vusi was held in solitary confinement; he was harassed by the police repeatedly. Many of his friends fled the country. Through this struggle, his songwriting became not only prolific but also healing for himself and for his listeners. And as Nadine Gordimer so vividly puts it, “Vusi sings as a bird does, in total response to being alive.” He simply became known as “The Voice.”
At the fall of Apartheid, Vusi was signed to Shifty Records/BMG records and finally recorded his first album—a collection of songs he’d been writing his whole life. In the title track, “When You Come Back,” he sings to his friends and the political exiles who had left the country telling them that “we will ring the bells and beat the drums when you come back” and he also calls for humanity asking that we “give something to the world and not just take from it.”
This song and its altruistic message rang loud in cars, at parties, and in the homes of both blacks and whites. It truly became an anthem. In 1994, Vusi was proud and very humbled to perform this song at Nelson Mandela’s presidential inauguration. “The Voice” was soon heard all over the world. Since the release of that first album, Vusi has traveled the globe sharing his songs of truth and hope, and sharing his country’s past and promise for a better future.
Vusi has shared the stage with Dave Matthews Band, Sting, Josh Groban, Paul Simon, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masekela, Angelique Kidjo, Bela Fleck, Ray LaMontagne, Amos Lee and many more. He’s also performed at two TED conferences, the Skoll World Forum, The Elders annual meeting, Nelson Mandela’s 90th Birthday, Mandela Day and more. But perhaps his biggest gig was in 2010 when he helped ring in the World Cup in South Africa, at Orlando Stadium in Soweto; “When You Come Back” also served as the theme song for ITV’s World Cup coverage in the UK.
