"Rainbow Revisited" From South African Pianist, Composer & Singer Thandi Ntuli with Producer & Percussionist Carlos Niño

In 2019 Ntuli traveled to Los Angeles for the first time to perform at The Ford Theatre at a show presented by The Nonsemble. She met the LA-based Niño in person for the first time during preparations for that performance, and he invited her to do a session with him and engineer Andy Kravitz at Studio 4 West.

As Ntuli recalls in her liner notes for the album: “Having been aware of some of his work… I knew that, with Carlos as producer, the artistic direction of the album would likely take me to a place I’d never considered going. A fact that had me both curious and terrified (as one tends to be when stepping into the unknown)… On that zen-like California afternoon in Andy Kravitz’s cozy studio in Venice Beach, he encouraged me to play around with various iterations of my composition Rainbow. “Try it this way”, “How about adding that?”, “Can you breathe into the mic?”, “What if you focus on the last section?”, and many other explorations that eventually went through a few cuts, edits, yays and nays to become this body of work. Rainbow Revisited was birthed through that session, another session a couple of days later, and a series of many small synchronicities that led up to that moment.”

Niño says: “I was super excited when I heard that Jason Sugars and Kali of The Nonsemble were bringing Thandi to Los Angeles. I was invited to play with her, Siya Makuzeni, and Katalyst Collective at The Ford Theatre. I reached out to Thandi to see if she had time and interest to get in the studio while she was here, and she did. We became fast friends, established essential trust, talked through some things, and got to work... I had always envisioned that this would be a full-length album, and we had plenty of recordings; but exactly what it was going to be, and how it was going to flow, took some time and space. In late 2021, I was called by an inner voice to return to this project and finish the album… Luckily, Thandi was into what I sent her and we were able to proceed in our collaboration, that is Rainbow Revisited.”

Exploring the fullness of who she is – who we are – in her personal and collaborative projects, South African composer, pianist, and singer Thandi Ntuli negotiates a wide palette of sound and genre. This approach is a proud embracing of having grown up with the family lore of a classical singer aunt, after whom she is named; an uncle (Selby Ntuli) who was a member of Afro-rock band Harari; and a grandfather (Levi Godlib Ntuli) who – while living with his young family in 1940s Sophiatown, a cultural hub not unlike 1920s Harlem in New York – fostered among his children a tradition of composing, playing and singing music together. This tradition still lives on. Through her work over a hitherto 13-year career, Thandi has carved space for herself, and others seeking home, to fully exist – thereby firmly situating herself and the contemporary South African generation in the musical cannon. Her frank-yet-empathetic and vulnerable gaze on herself, and the world, has birthed a body of work that facilitates our access to our histories, presents and futures by creating in music literature the existence of language, experiences and space that speak to us. For young South Africans and creatives – not least of all, women – Thandi represents a home-going to ourselves, each other and our communities.