South African pianist, composer, healer, and thinker Nduduzo Makhathini has announced the June 26 release of The Myth We Choose, his fourth album for Blue Note Records, a deeply conceptual and spiritually charged work that expands his ongoing exploration of music as ritual, philosophy, and collective memory. The album is available now for pre-order on vinyl, CD, and digital formats, and is introduced with the release of the lead track “Kuzodlula,” a meditation on forgiveness that Makhathini frames as “the very attempt to forgive the unforgivable.”
From its outset, The Myth We Choose positions itself as more than a recording project. It is a constructed world of ideas, sound, and intergenerational collaboration, co-produced by Makhathini and his son, Thingo Makhathini. At just 18 years old, Thingo brings a generational perspective that expands the album’s sonic palette, particularly through subtle electronic textures and groove-based ideas that shift Makhathini’s trio language into new territory. According to Makhathini, these elements are not additions but co-authored transformations—threads that reshape how the music breathes and moves.
The core ensemble features Makhathini’s working trio with bassist Dalisu Ndlazi and drummer Lukmil Pérez (with select tracks featuring drummer Ayanda Sikade). Together, they form a fluid rhythmic and harmonic foundation that allows the music to expand outward, making space for a remarkable roster of collaborators. Among them are saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, DJ and producer Black Coffee, trumpeter Robin Fassie, guitarist Keenan Ahrends, and vocalists Thando Zide, Muneyi, and Omagugu, Makhathini’s spouse and long-time creative partner. The result is a collective sound that resists hierarchy, instead functioning as a shared field of expression.
At the heart of the album is Makhathini’s enduring belief that music is inseparable from myth-making. For him, songs are not static artifacts but active participants in shaping how history is remembered and reimagined. In his liner notes, he reflects on the idea that songs “look at us” as much as we listen to them, and that the cultural weight of music lies in its ability to survive into the future as a form of memory. Whether voices are preserved or forgotten, he argues, depends on the myths societies choose to construct in the present.
This philosophical framework is not abstract in execution. Makhathini approaches performance as ritual, where musician and listener enter a shared space of vulnerability and reflection. The trio setting becomes a site of transformation rather than display, where sound functions as both invocation and response. In this context, improvisation is not simply musical invention but a form of collective attention, where past, present, and future are held simultaneously.
The album’s conceptual scope is matched by its emotional depth. “Kuzodlula,” the lead single, centers on forgiveness as an ongoing process rather than a resolved state. Elsewhere, the presence of electronics, expanded grooves, and layered ensemble textures points toward a widening of Makhathini’s already expansive sound world. These shifts are shaped in part by Thingo’s influence, which Makhathini describes as essential in guiding the album toward new sonic directions.
Throughout The Myth We Choose, references to ancestral memory, cultural continuity, and spiritual responsibility are woven into the music’s structure. Yet the work remains grounded in lived collaboration, shaped by long-standing musical relationships and an openness to spontaneous creation. The inclusion of voices from across South Africa’s contemporary music landscape reinforces the album’s central idea: that myth is not inherited passively but actively constructed through shared artistic labor.
Makhathini also situates the project within a broader ethical and historical context, reflecting on the limitations placed on Black performance within global entertainment structures. Rather than reinforcing those constraints, he reframes performance as ritual space—an environment where healing, imagination, and cultural restoration can coexist. In this sense, the album is not only reflective but aspirational, proposing a model of music-making rooted in care, presence, and intention.
Ultimately, The Myth We Choose extends Makhathini’s long-standing artistic mission: to create music that envisions the world it wishes to bring into being. As he has often noted, drawing inspiration from Wayne Shorter, the purpose is to play and compose music aligned with the world one hopes for, rather than the one already known. In that spirit, the album becomes both a statement and a proposal—an invitation to listen differently, and to imagine forward.
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