Sundays are for lovers, even when it’s blue.
If there is anything he has taught us, it is this.
Even on a blue Sunday when the rain keeps falling, eyes are dark and coloured, the company of a lover makes it all okay.
The lyrics: “I want to share my love with you. You should be here, nowhere else but here… I promise that I will never leave you, I'll save you from the heavy clouds 'cause memories they don't fade” are probably the first that come to mind when someone thinks of Langa Mavuso’s Sunday Blues song.
While many got to know and love him for the six-year-old song, it has aged well as memories have proven to not fade indeed.
If anything, the memories of his late partner are the fuel behind the lyrics to his latest single, You Live On, which dropped on on 24 November.
“The song writing was a collaboration between me and Manana. We've been friends for a long time. We went to UCT together, and so I felt ready to speak about my grief, but I just had the words, but not the melody so I was trying to find the picture with him. We sat down and he just asked me, ‘what do you remember? Like, what are the things that you remember the most? What are the memories that meant the most to you? What are the things that you said to each other that stood out for you?’ In that moment, we then started to speak about the relationship, spending seven years together, living together, and then the ultimate passing that happened which was obviously quite tragic for me.
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“What we're trying to do more than anything in the song is to remain hopeful. It can be sad, but I don't want it to feel like I'm not in a good place because I am in a good place. I want to remember and eulogize without making it dark, but rather to find the light in it and to say that I will always remember you, I will always love you and I'll remember you,” he tells Drum.
When Langa was writing the song, the words of Chef Lentswe Bhengu “love first, love always” were ringing in his head frequently as he reminisced on their times together by the garden – the memories of laughter, conversations and smiles. Although this brought a wave of loneliness, he managed to not only gain hope but breathe hope into the song through the grief.
Of all the lines in the tribute song, the singer and songwriter says that “I never knew I'd be so strong. But you live on, 'cause I had to carry on” is the one line that carries the most weight in the song because he really did not know how strong he could be until the death of his lover in February 2023.
Langa shares with Drum that on the day that he was told of his passing, he was in Cape Town rehearsing for the RMB Starlight Classics.
“The next day I had to be on stage with an orchestra and I continued to perform. The production team asked me if I wanted to go home, or I would like to continue with the show. The most important thing for me was to remember that my dreams are still important, so I had to go on, I had to find the strength within me to know that regardless of the physical presence being gone, that he lives on in the memories, he lives on in the spirit, he’s around me.”
For the first time on the RMB starlight classics stage, the Sunday Blues lyrics rang stronger and deeper than ever before.
“I was watching the video on YouTube the other day of me doing Sunday Blues with the orchestra for Starlight Classics and my cousin and I noted how sad I was on that stage. But also, it's the embodiment of the emotion of the song because the words in Sunday Blues say, ‘you should be here. Nowhere else but here, the rain keeps falling’. It's kind of like we've reached the full embodiment of this song.”
Throughout, he says he found the strength to deliver the performance in knowing that his partner knew that performing the hit song with an orchestra was always a dream of his and that he loved him so much that he wouldn’t have wanted him to back down from it.
“I found a way, I found strength through prayer, I found strength through family, through friends, I had a really strong support system that was very much around me. As soon as everything happened, my famil flew down to Cape Town and everyone was there with me in the hotel and as I was doing the show, I had a family member or a friend in the green room with me on the side of the stage as I was going on to stage to perform, there was someone there with me as I came off,” he adds gratefully.
From the beginning of the grieving journey to date, the 29-year-old R&B musician says that he has been held down with love and has been receiving support from all directions, including his fans.
Like any other grieving journey though, there came a time when it was just all silent and quiet and life demanded a move on.
“When the quiet moments came, I knew that I had to lean on something greater than myself. I had to be into prayer, into my spirituality, into God. I started going to church more. I started praying more. My prayer life with my mom got even stronger. And having those words, I never knew I'd be so strong, came from that place of knowing that the strength came from the incredible support that I had and also me finding strength within myself through faith. I even felt like a great amount of support from the fans as soon as I went back on the road to perform, you know, it felt like everyone was just like holding me.”
Recently, Langa courageously graced the South African Music Awards stage with the new song as part of his tribute performance for all the artists that we’ve lost as a country this year alongside Grammy award-winning Wouter Kellerman and the Jesus Collective led by Khaya Mthethwa and Loyiso Bala.
“That was such a poignant moment for me in many ways, I think one should be able to give that comfort to not just myself, but everyone who has lost this year, everyone who has gone through some kind of loss in their life the different families of the different artists, but also just the individuals at home watching, knowing that you can remember the person that you love through the memories through knowing that all that you shared still lives with you.”
Despite the loss that he has endured, he has also welcomed blessings in his life this year. Not only did he open for Tamia’s South African tour, but he also did the same for the BoyzIIMen tour, both of which he did not drop the ball in.
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More than anything, he is grateful for everything that 2023 came with because he was reminded of the importance of living life to its fullest.
“The features and the people who have contributed to this album that's coming up have been dream features for me and dream artists to collaborate with, to write with, to produce with to sing with even, you know. It’s been so beautiful for me that I've been able to come to a place of finding strength again and just being at peace and in a place of acceptance that things in life don't always go the way that we want them to go. But it's important to remember your own purpose. It's important to protect and to live in your own joy,” he speaks on his new album.
The songbird even moved into a new house to mark the beginning of a new chapter alone, to detach from the past as he prepares to drop an album of restoration and hope.
“The album is a journey. It really begins in a place of grief, at the place of hopelessness. And then we start to grow in it. We start to find the strength to say that ‘you live on’. And then once we find that strength, there's a beautiful gospel record that I've written, and it's the only gospel song on the album which speaks about the faith that comes from it. There's also a huge story of hopefulness for new love and, and an openness to new love so it speaks to being open to wanting and to receiving new love and to enjoying the fruits of life that still are here with us.”
