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Today, Morgan Heritage, the 3x GRAMMY award-winning band, share “Bambulele,” the latest single and releases the full tracklisting for their forthcoming album The Homeland, out April 21. Inspired by GBV (Gender Based Violence) in South Africa, 12-year old Hector Pieterson and the Soweto Uprising in 1976 - where Black students protested the enforcement of teaching their entire curriculum in Afrikaans, which was mostly spoken by the white population, instead of their native languages. “Bambulele” is a traditional Mbube (a form of Zulu choral hymns) song of mourning. During the protest on June 15th 1976, Pieterson was shot and killed by the police, who opened fire on the students. “Bambulele for us is a call to Africans at home and abroad to unite for the preservation of Mama Africa,” says Morgan Heritage. “Because we can't allow her to suffer any longer at the hands of wrongdoers.”
Set as the opening track to The Homeland, Morgan Heritage is joined by the Brothers & Sisters Art Organization, a youth group/choir based in Cape Town. They sing the song to comfort themselves, their family, and friends because of the rising GBV (Gender Based Violence) victims across South Africa. Their performance takes the song to an etheric-ancestral level that evokes a soulfulness the listener did not know they had. With each note, the soloist shares the guttural pain experienced in the lyrics, which loosely translates to “They killed my mother / they killed my mother / who will I be left with in this world? / Who will I be left with? / They killed my mother, but she didn’t do anything to them.” Bambulele” is chilling, fervent, and lineal, delivering an opening track that frames the record as the must hear World Music project of 2023.
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