Pilani Bubu on music as archive ahead of her Sauti za Busara performance

Before Pilani Bubu ever steps onto the Sauti za Busara stage, she arrives already carrying generations with her. For the South African singer, composer and cultural curator, performance is never just about sound, it is about transmission.

She describes herself as Umntan’eThongo, a child of the ancestors of dreams, and it is a phrase that quietly explains her presence: her voice operates as a vessel for memory, spirituality and lived African experience.

This philosophy has shaped a career that refuses easy labels. Pilani’s self-defined “jazzy folk soul” blends South African folk traditions with contemporary jazz, soul, spoken word and experimental textures.

Across albums such as Warrior of Light, Lockdown Lovestory and the expansive Folklore series, she layers Zulu Mbaqanga funk, Xhosa, Mpondo and Tswana rhythms with narrative intent, treating music as both archive and offering rather than entertainment alone.

Her upcoming performance at Sauti za Busara, one of Africa’s most culturally significant festivals, feels like a natural extension of this work.

Long a personal ambition, the festival aligns with her lifelong commitment to African-originated music, intergenerational dialogue and cultural preservation.

It is a space where healing, protest and communal memory coexist, the same tensions that animate her catalogue.

In this conversation with Pulse, Pilani reflects on how storytelling became her social obligation, how independence shaped her artistic clarity, and why her next chapter is less about visibility and more about legacy.

What emerges is a portrait of an artist who is not simply performing folklore, but actively building the infrastructure to ensure it survives.

Q: How do you think your vocal identity has evolved into the "Pilani sound," and what ancestral threads do you feel you're carrying forward when you sing?

My vocal identity has evolved or been consistently framed into what I call "jazzy folk soul". It's a versatile fusion of International and South African folk styles.

I have produced, over the years, different projects projecting differing narratives and stories paired with the appropriate sonic landscapes.

Like Zulu Mbaqanga Funk, Mpondo, Xhosa, and Tswana rhythms that layer my album series: Folklore Chapter 1 and Folklore

Albums like Warrior of Light and Lockdown Lovestory with their contemporary jazz, soul, NuR&B influences with electronic sounds.

I am a storyteller at heart, and as time went by, it became pertinent for me to weave spoken word and poetry in my work, emphasising the centrality of the story or the narrative.

I also consider my work to be of the healing and teaching kind. When I sing, I am carrying forward an ancestral thread as ‘Umntan'eThongo’, a child of the ancestors of dreams.

I come from a long lineage of lightworkers and healers. My creative visions are often channelled through dreamscapes, meaning my voice is often a medium for spiritual repatriation.

I’m consciously performing cultural and social work that has been previously suppressed. I find this to be an act required of our generation to mend intergenerational cultural fractures and step fully into my inherited gift of healing and teaching.

Q: When did you first realize that your storytelling was not just art, but an act of advocacy?

After the 2020 SAMA26 Award for Best African Adult Contemporary Album for Folklore Chapter 1, I woke up to a greater call to build a platform for Pan-African Folk music and African storytelling genres.

I started the Folklore Community as a platform for intergenerational dialogue. The realisation was to the limited documentation of African Folklore.

The Folklore Community has now hosted 5 years of the Folklore Festival and Folklore for Kids events. 

Though the album Folklore chapter 1 is cultural advocacy and a pursuit to use music as a technology for archiving, it told a story of patriarchy and the various social plights women contend with in my country, South Africa.

The next definitive shift from art to explicit advocacy was catalysed by the overlapping crises of 2020: the global pandemic, the severe escalation of femicide in South Africa, and the widespread visibility of police violence against African Americans.

This breaking point compelled me to finally record a human rights composition I had written when I was just thirteen, 23 years earlier.

I recorded a mini orchestra piece titled ‘Hopes Springing High’, a musical adaptation of ‘Still I Rise’ by Maya Angelou.

The decision to debut it exclusively at impact-driven humanitarian events, like the Nelson Mandela Foundation Annual Lecture on Mandela Day, confirmed that music can serve as higher purpose and a tool for public advocacy.

After the release of Folklore Chapter 2, which was focused on demystifying the demonisation of African Spirituality, I wrote another collaborative album titled Nay’indaba that addresses the social issues of South African after 30 years of Freedom.

It is now undeniable to even myself, that my activism is now intrinsically intertwined in my work. My work is my social obligation, and storytelling is the medium.

Q: And what issues are closest to your heart as you continue using your voice as a tool for cultural visibility and preservation?

The issues closest to my heart are fundamentally about social justice, specifically confronting the residual effects of historical and systemic trauma left by the legacy of apartheid that still persists in South Africa today.

This focus extends acutely to poverty, femicide, and gender-based violence (GBV).

I actively work with organizations, including my own Amplified Voices, using creative work and music to articulate different perspectives and amplify voices for tangible change.

My albums Folklore and Nayindaba (which I will be performing at Sauti Za Busara) are poetic and militant chronicles using traditional folk music to tell stories of aggrieved women, like ‘Mama Ka Sibongile’ and ‘Makoti’ and critique entrenched patriarchal structures, such as questioning toxic masculinity and the ritual of circumcision in tracks like Qula Kwedini.

My role is to use storytelling as a tool for reformist preservation. In Nayindaba this is explored in songs like: Awuyazi, Umfazi, Imbokodo and Asifani.

Q: What gaps were you trying to fill in the cultural landscape when you created the festival, and how has it shaped your own understanding of identity and heritage?

I felt there was a tendency toward superficial cultural consumption when it came down to the wire, culture and cultural music was kitch and uncool.

I want to come together as a collective of various cultural storytellers of multiple disciplines of art to tell one unified story of the needs for cultural preservation and documentation that was bubbling under.

The festival showcases and highlights this work and has done an amazing job to make folk music, folk literature and more, more popular and sought after on even what we call so- called jazz stages.

The festival is designed as an educational institution disguised as a celebration. It aims to teach the audience and encourage them "to accept an offering that is there to teach them as a fundamental family structures of storytelling through sharing and intergenerational dialogue.

The process of curating this community-driven platform, especially with themes like #WeThefolk  for our 3rd Edition and #Kinfolk for the 4th edition, has continually shaped my understanding of heritage by reinforcing its ability to drive social cohesion and collective culture.

It seems I am no longer just an artist performing folklore; I am a custodian building the necessary infrastructure for African identity to be transferred and sustained across generations.

Q: You've travelled to over 19 countries... How has performing across different continents expanded your ideas about African storytelling, and what global encounters have shaped your artistic worldview the most?

It has been transformative because it has affirmed the universality of African storytelling and that any tribal or traditional narratives exploring human consciousness can transcended beyond borders.

Any personal African folklore can make for a universal human story in its teachings and move hearts when it travels through sounds or music. 

My early travels, documented in my album Warrior of Light, took me to New Orleans, the South of France, and Dublin, showing me the freedom that comes from pursuing purpose.

And the purpose lied in the pursuit of music. Music was my beacon of light and then the vehicle I would begin to use to bring light.

My first two albums were in English and as I travelled the world and on the African continent, I discovered peoples love for South African music and that the best story that I could tell, was a unique one of my people.

I started adding South African folk songs to my stage repertoire and this is how I began writing in vernacular languages and this birthed the album series Folklore. It was some kind of initiation.

Traveling has brought me so many collaborations, due to the cost of travel, I have always most dominantly sourced and worked with local bands.

This has been the best kind of cultural exchange. I’ve collaborated with musicians and producers in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique and Cameroon, creating the albums Konke, Lockdown Lovestory, That Box and other singles.

My latest global encounter and collaboration has been with the French trans-oriental jazz-rock collective Marthe on the album Nay’ Indaba, which is a conversational musical journey exploring a South African story.

Nay’Indaba further proved to me that African storytelling doesn't need to be simplified for global reach; rather, fusing our intricate truths with sophisticated, avant-garde genres can create a musicality that is uniquely “psychedelic and ferocious," provoking global intellectual and political engagement.

Q: Eight self-produced and independently released albums is no small feat... What has independence taught you about your creativity, and what are some moments behind the scenes where you had to rely on sheer belief to keep going?

My journey has taught me that my artistic output is maximised when guided by absolute clarity of vision, uncompromised by external commercial dictates.

This clarity was essential when I made the existential leap in 2011 and quit my corporate job, trusting entirely in the "pursuit and power of passion" as a viable life blueprint.

Indeed all these moments have been about relying on sheer belief. And re-defining breakthroughs and milestones, not from a POP perspective but the sustainability of PURPOSE.

One thing a mentor of mine once said that has held me all these years is that: “It takes 10 years to become an overnight success”.

And man, I am 15 years in and I’m not quite sure I am a success yet, only legacy will tell. But I am here, still believing in something bigger than me.

Q: Your interpretation of "Still I Rise" is transcendent... What drew you to Maya Angelou's work, and how did translating her iconic words into music reshape your relationship with poetry and affirmation?

I was into to Maya Angelou’s poetry from a young age. As a child born into apartheid, fully conscious to the marks of change between the 1990 and 1994.

I loved her and many poets because of their core themes of resilience, dignity, and radical affirmation, which has always aligned with my mandate as a humanitarian and my purpose in music. To use music as a vehicle for healing and transformative change.

Providing a lyrical interpretation of "Hopes Springing High, Still I Rise" was a milestone unto itself for me, as it validated my role as a contemporary poet-musician capable of bridging global literary legacies with modern African sound.

It affirmed that music is the most transcendent medium for widespread, powerful affirmation, linking the foundational strength of the African diaspora to my specific folk-soul expression.

Q: Sync deals with Netflix for "Ufuna Bani" and "Abantwana"... What does it mean for you to see African stories and sounds woven into mainstream visual culture, and how do you envision African folk-soul evolving on global platforms?

These songs are pan-African collaborations that I am really proud of. They speak to the journey’s I have traversed in music.

"Ufuna Bani" (my collaboration with Afronautiq, Kenya)  and a love song and "Abantwana" (with Blick Bassy, Cameroon) a song about children and intergenerational dialogue, show that both light and deep authentic African stories, sounds, and language, can showcase pan-African synergy. 

Even though these songs come out of niche markets they too can garner global visibility within mainstream visual culture.

I envision African folk-soul evolving into a central component of global audio-visual output. The genre’s strength lies in its authenticity, some level of spiritual depth, and rich sonic textures.

Culturally specific music too is currently emerging as the future global soundtrack, normalising complex cultural truths and indigenous languages on ubiquitous viewing platforms.

Q: You've worked with artists from Kenya, Cameroon, and across the continent. When you collaborate, what do you look for in another artist—energy, vision, storytelling alignment?

While energy, shared vision, and storytelling alignment are certainly essential components for any creative partnership, the paramount criterion I look for in a collaborator is a capacity for mutual vulnerability and shared empowerment.

Collaboration must go beyond a surface-level artistic exchange. I engage fellow artists willing to engage in "deeper downloads", delving into their inner worlds, their fears, emotional struggles, and their fight for recognition.

Our common pursuit becomes the greatest equaliser no matter where each one of us are in our career, the greatest humility comes from coming back to where we ground ourselves in our own ambitions.

Q: And which collaboration shifted something fundamental in your art?

That Box is a project I have been constantly producing and evolving since 2016. It’s been 10 years of traveling collaborations to find the right people and sound to tell my creative story and my pursuit as an artists.

It has travelled through 5 producers under the name: East African Wave in Kenya, song by song collaborations with artists in Ghana (Wanlov and pianist Victor Dey Jr), to live sessions with some of the best jazz musicians in Cape Town, Kenya, United Kingdom and Johannesburg… and it’s still the little precious baby I have only performed live and staggering to release on streaming. It means so much to me. 

After this is the joint project Konke, which I undertook with Afronautiq during collaborative sessions in Nairobi, which shifted my artistic approach in a way.

This two-year process, which included collaborating in Kenya’s Supersonic Studio, was a cathartic exercise, focusing heavily on vulnerability and empowering conversations about our journey in our craft and in love.

It was one of the most organic music making processes I’ve had.  Birthing songs through real time and giving "everything" to the process, we discover that the very act of creation is both a taking and a giving. None of the songs were recorded twice.

All takes were the supposed demo, 1 take delivery. It was an intensive and therapeutic approach to making music and something I am continued to strive for in my subsequent artistic endeavours. For example I wrote Nay’Indaba in 8 hours with Marthe.

They came to visit me in South Africa, and I hosted them at Flame Studios at Constitution Hill. By the Thursday of that week, we were already performing the music live at the Alliance Francaise. I feel like that’s how it should all flow when things are truly heartfelt in realtime.

Q: What can audiences expect from your 2026 performance, and how are you preparing to bring your folklore-infused, genre-blending sound to one of Africa's most culturally significant stages?

My preparation is meticulously focused on honouring Sauti za Busara’s mandate of promoting African-originated music and cultural heritage.

I am curating a setlist that balances African folk in Folklore Chapter 1 and 2,  with the complexity of my contemporary genre fusions on Nay’indaba.

As you can imagine a high dose of activism and human protest, as these projects embody both the vulnerability of African culture through the eyes of both nurturing feminist views and the militancy of strong African women to right the wrongs of the world upon their children.

With the theme around children, and letting them shine. I am keen to explore the delicacy and purpose in this message as it currently exists as an ambition in my own music and my work as the curator of the Folklore Festival.

People can expect a balance of healing sounds and the a highly energetic repertoire that also asks all of us to use our voices and bodies as a form of protest.

Q: What do you think makes Sauti za Busara such an incredible festival?

Sauti’s legacy speaks for itself and its unwavering integrity and dedication to its core mission. I myself have been meaning to attend the festival for the last 15 years and I am so thrilled the opportunity has finally come with me attending as an artists. Every time I had booked tickets, something came up. 

Any platform promoting and developing musicians who are actively engaged in preserving cultural traditions and focuses almost exclusively on showcasing African-originated music, is close to my heart.

The festival serves as a critical pan-African cultural benchmark by prioritising women, youth, and emerging talents, particularly from East Africa. It is a powerful confluence of heritage, and communal energy.

Q: When you think about your next chapter, what feels most urgent, most exciting, or most necessary for Pilani Bubu the storyteller, the activist, and the curator of heritage?

When I look at my next chapter, I see a strategic expansion of my influence and legacy across all my roles:

Most Urgent (The Storyteller): It is most urgent that I formally archive my cultural insights beyond music, I’m not sure how yet – a coffee table book, a film, more multi-disciplinary projects. This will provide a structured, in-depth archive of my unique perspective on identity, culture, and the fusion of tradition and modernity.

Most Exciting (The Entrepreneur): The opportunity to leverage my creative expertise and experience by continuing to host the Folklore Festival, help my brand clients with their own stories, expanding my visibility onto new, diverse visual platforms. 

Most Necessary (The Curator): It remains necessary to perpetually scale the Folklore Festival and perhaps producing another TV show. Elevating my focus on facilitating intergenerational cultural transfer, sustaining African identity  - at the moment I am doing through my podcast: Folklor.ish

Q: What wisdom would you offer to emerging creatives who want to honour their roots while still innovating and finding their own voice?

The central wisdom I offer is definitive: "Stay true to yourself. Authenticity is sustainability" . To successfully honour your roots while innovating, you must recognize that deep, self-knowledgeable authenticity is the only foundation that provides lasting professional viability.

It must feel like you, it must all align with you. Be as honest as possible about this, then you can hold any identity.

Also, don't be afraid of hard work. Bravery is required! My ultimate blueprint has been to link my independence and financial autonomy to an unshakeable inner purpose always working to strengthen myself from the inside out.