Born Nonthuthuzelo Puoane in May 1979, she was raised in the Pretoria township of Mamelodi. Townships are urban black areas created under the, founded as an alternative training academy for artists denied access to whites-only institutions. She was under the tutelage of indigenous African music scholar and practitionerMy first experience of Puoane on stage was at the University of Cape Town while she was on a visit to South Africa. I was a young jazz student then.
The process of writing the songs was a different approach for me and Ewout. Usually the music comes first , then I come and start improvising melodies and lyrics. This time, the lyric was there first. On some songs the melody came spontaneously. Some songs needed just a tiny bit of adaptation. I added a short verse in Sepedi on the poem The Way We Love in the song titled When We Love. This will be heard in a year on volume two though. The tune just needed an extra verse.
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