Msaki x Tubatsi brings together South African solo star Msaki (a double winner at the 2022 South African Music Awards) and Tubatsi Mpho Moloi of Johannesburg band Urban Village (also a member of Keleketla!), alongside French cellist Clément Petit (Aloe Blacc, Ballaké Sissoko).
Those of you that follow our regular mixes will have heard tracks from Msaki x Tubatsi‘s debut album Synthetic Hearts recently on our Folk Show Episode 130 (playing Subaleka) and, most recently, this week, on Lost in Transmission No. 95 (playing Khanya).
Today, they are sharing their new video for ‘Stay As You Are’. Speaking about the new video – filmed in Zanzibar – director Sanaa says; ‘Stay As You Are’ is a reflection of Stone Town in Zanzibar captured using an iPhone. Opening with a long shot following the Maasai into the everyday life in the Ocean. We see all age groups engaging differently in the same space, staying true to the beautiful rituals done in history of the Island.
Speaking about the track itself, Msaki notes; It’s a song about vulnerability. Are these people speaking to each other, or about their other journeys? Really, it can be both. I know your story, now you know mine. These lines are really important to me – ‘Stay as you are, even till the day you grow older. Even my shadow knows’. The shadow is where the pain stays, where your dark side stays. In every failed relationship people fail to integrate their dark side into the light. They didn’t find a way to come to the light and heal. There’s a pledge here, to make that space a little bit lighter, to find a way to express my true self here, where the ego and pride can die, and I can find real healing. So it’s a slightly deeper love song than meets the eye.
Tubatsi adds; ‘Stay As You Are’ is mostly a conversation. In life, there are so many things happening and changing, and this song speaks about comfortableness, uncertainty and confirmation to say: I appreciate you and as you are, with me around you, I am happier. It’s one of my most favourite songs, it helps me remain in light and keeps me staying as I am.
Recorded at Jazzworx, Johannesburg and co-produced by Petit and Frédéric Soulard, Synthetic Heart is a body of work that intentionally reveals the inescapable brokenness at the heart of what it means to be human and the inescapable risk of what it means to love.