Makhadzi

Touted as a successor to the late Brenda Fassie, the “Queen of African Pop,” Makhadzi is a purveyor of energetic “Limpopo house” music, named after the South African region in which she was raised and developed a formative career as a wedding singer. She sings in Tshivenda, a language not widely known beyond the northern part of her province, and incorporates elements of amapiano into her music, a synth-based local genre, as displayed on a 2021 double-platinum-selling collaboration with Prince Benza, “Ghanama.” She was born Ndivhudzannyi Ralivhona in 1996 and raised in the village of Ha-Mashamba. Makhadzi’s parents split when she was young, leading to her being raised — along with her sister — by her mother. It was a humble upbringing and by the age of 13, she joined the Makirikiri Musical Group as a dancer. During her time with this troupe, she discovered her singing voice — a gutsy, soulful, rasping tone — and began to put everything into pursuing a career as a solo artist. While still at school, Makhadzi could be found busking on streets, outside stores, promoting copies of her earliest recordings. As word spread about her performances, she became a popular booking at Limpopo weddings. Often, when performing in a Sepedi-speaking part of the province, people found it difficult to pronounce her given name. Instead, they called her Makhadzi, the name of a character on a TV soap, and the moniker stayed with her. Although Makhadzi wrote, recorded, and self-released many songs from 2012 onwards, it was 2017′s propulsive “Tshanda Vhuya” which took her status as a local celebrity up a notch. The resident impresario, Rita Dee, helped her to maintain this position by promoting subsequent singles, and in April 2018, Makhadzi released her first proper album, Shumela Venda. In 2019, she featured on Master KG’s “Tshikwama” from his Jerusalema album, and the pair became romantically involved for a short while. Later that year, Makhadzi released Matorokisi, with a title track that proved to be game-changing for her career, and a single, “Mphemphe,” which topped the South African charts. With the release of 2020′s Kokovha on Michael Alan Meyers’ Open Mic Productions, she broke through into mainstream South African culture, as it contained two more number one singles. Early 2021 found her collaborating on singles with Mlindo the Vocalist and Diamond Platinumz before another album, the gold-selling, self-coronating African Queen arrived that September. 2022 brought prestigious guest spots on singles by Lowsheen and Prince Benza before April released Pain Ya Jealous, on which she worked closely with her former partner, Master KG. In July, Makhadzi embarked on her first international tour, with dates in Canada and the U.K., culminating with an appearance at Zimfest in St. Albans, just north of London. ~ James Wilkinson