Abel Selaocoe: singer, cellist, improviser, and a musician with the rare capacity to make leaps between traditions feel like smooth, natural steps. 

Where his debut album Where is Home had a restless, searching feel, Hymns of Bantu feels more like a homecoming. It “speaks of an idea of celebrating those that have come before us,” he says. And, with that realisation—that home can be felt in the past as much as the present—Selaocoe breathes and takes stock, before the cycle of ancestral recall and renewal repeats again. 

The sense of easing into a familiar space refreshed is felt from the album’s first moment, as keening strings dissolve into a light, relaxed groove. Tsohle Tsohle, meaning “everything is everything” in Sesotho, is a celebration of connection to the world around us, and the first of many mindful Selaocoe philosophies that underpin Hymns of Bantu. This famous South African hymn acts as a jumping off point for cool harmonies, bubbling vamps, and Selaocoe’s own vocal cries flying overhead.

Groove is an essential part of Selaocoe’s vernacular, with bassist Alan Keary and the percussion trio of Sidiki Dembele, Dudù Kouate and Fred Thomas driving the infectiously danceable Emmanuele. Selaocoe is unafraid to reach for universals in both thought and sound, and groove and vocality represent the two most pertinent examples of the latter. After a stylish opening bassline, Emmanuele blossoms into a grooving hub of rhythms competing joyously, before switching focus to a solo Selaocoe, who cycles through his wide vocabulary of vocal clicks, cries and overtones.

Kea Morata (meaning “I love them so”) is Selaocoe’s reminder “to give people their flowers” while they’re still in this world. Emmanuele’s groove feel remains, but it morphs into something slightly edgier here—the tempo increases, textures thin, and string lines dart, bulge and flourish, never quite stabilising. The space opens up for Selaocoe the cello improviser to explore, building back into a jagged unison ensemble texture, before all elements—vocals, glassy string sounds, layers of insistent rhythm on top of wide-open grooves—unite for a fierce close.

This energy cools for Tshepo. Meaning “faith” in Tswana, for Selaocoe, who was brought up around traditional spiritual practices as well as attending churches, faith is more a universal feeling, closer to the Sesotho verb “tshepa”: hope. Still, the musical atmosphere is prayer-like, and the setting—a lone vocalist with airy string support, occasionally breaking out into plush, expansive gestures—brings out a different vocal character in Selaocoe. After the fiery, driving tones of Emmanuele and Kea Morata, there’s more melancholy here.

If the first part of Tshepo is searching unsurely for hope, then the second is an affirmation: that hope exists, and that it can be spoken into existence. The Rapella kicks in dramatically, with large vocal forces summoned from nowhere, learning a prayer text through repetition. The first Tshepo theme eventually reappears at the close, faith reaffirmed.

Selaocoe’s first album Where Is Home included selections from J.S. Bach’s Cello Suites as moments of reorientation—solo cello, alone, after the fire and fury of pieces like Ka Bohaleng. Here, the Sarabande from the Sixth Suite is totally transformed in character. Arranged by Fred Thomas for cello and romantically tinged string orchestra, there’s something vaguely operatic to this yearning new take.

“My heart has always stayed with appeasing my ancestors — seeing if I can get in touch with them, to ask for advice,” Selaocoe told the New York Times in 2022. Dinaka is the essence of this multi-valence, finding new musical ground by digging deep into traditional knowledge, in this case the musical and spiritual traditions of the Pedi people. On Dinaka, the musical framework changes shape: there are new timbres, especially in percussion, Thomas’s prepared piano and Selaocoe’s throat singing; grooves lose direction, becoming elliptical; and, where improvisation previously happened within compositions or on top of grooves, it now becomes an end in itself. The result is a fractal whole-group improvisation in the shape of an ancestral prayer.

For Selaocoe, the most abiding musical universal is the human singing voice, a throughline that can connect different traditions in a single span. This is best shown by his cello and vocals version of a solo viola da gamba piece by Marin Marais (1656-1728) from his third suite, “Les voix humaines.” “I decided to speak my language into this piece,” Selaocoe says, as he sings of his ancestors existing in tandem with this similarly ancient music. As a coda, there’s a brief return to the strains of Tsohle Tsohle. Everything comes full circle.

Takamba is a style of music with origins in Northern Mali and Niger, and associated with the Songhai and Tuareg peoples. Selaocoe thought it interesting “to sit in the chair of another African country, and celebrate that” with this piece. Groove returns as the texture’s central building block, this time closer to a shuffle feel.

Selaocoe describes Sicilian cellist Giovanni Sollima as a key inspiration for his open-ended explorations of the cello. L.B Files is Sollima’s narrative tribute to cellist Luigi Boccherini (1743-1805) that imagines his life as a mini-movie, and leans into stylistic melange that’s become the hallmark of Sollima’s creative voice. The first two movements from that piece—Concerto and Igiul—showcase Selaocoe the cellist at his most dynamic and rhapsodic. After this moment of calm, Selaocoe concludes on another note with Camagu—surreal humour, as he builds a driving groove out of the twangy sound of a toy violin. “We begin to groove,” he says, “thankful for our names, the wisdom for the people that have passed, and enjoying the voices and hymns of Bantu.”

Thank you for being an integral influence in my music and life! Hymns of Bantu has your creativity, kindness, determination and love etched in. Makwande! 

Fred Thomas 

Joseph Reiser 

Manchester Collective

Ruth Gibson

Alva Selaocoe

Ntombi Miriam Selaocoe 

Sammy Selaocoe 

Micheal Masote

Kutlwano Masote 

Dudù Kouate

Sidiki Dembele

Alan Keary 

Ben Oosthuizen 

Ilse Myburgh 

Hannah Roberts 

Molefi Mathe (Levi Love)