“Sweet Sorrow,” the newest song from Thabisa, begins with a pulsating guitar line that suggests both melancholy and movement
“Even in strange times, I’ll find my strength,” Thabisa sings. “Even when I’m down, I’ll stand tall / Do you ever feel you don’t belong? / Sometimes I wish I wasn’t born.”
That’s all before the rhythm comes sneaking in — and, in time, crashing in — as the song builds in intensity, and Thabisa uses her voice to become an entire chorus.
A shot of resilience is what anyone might expect who has seen the South-African born and now New Haven-based musician perform. Thabisa has lit up every stage in town she has been on, from Best Video to Cafe Nine to the International Festival of Arts and Ideas.
The profound sadness that accompanies that resilience is a newer ingredient in Thabisa’s songwriting. As it turns out, it signals a new direction in her music.
“Sweet Sorrow” is part of a burst of creativity for Thabisa (who also hosts “Thabisa and Friends” on WNHH), compelled by her husband Charlie Rich creating a studio for her in the attic of their house. “I can make all the noise I need to make,” she said.
Not long after, Long Wharf asked her to take part in its latest iteration of the New Haven Play Project.
“This is still my year of yes — if someone asks me to do something, I say yes,” Thabisa said. “Just so I can learn how to do things I would not otherwise do.” She delivered a raw story about growing up in South Africa. Whatever music was to accompany her story, she needed to write it herself, and did. “I ended up recording two songs,” she said. That happened in August. She used GarageBand to produce the music, and (of course) did all the singing herself.
“I was so excited about this adventure of creating my own music from start to finish,” Thabisa said. She found she loved the process of not only writing the music, but programming and producing it; to “make the sounds that I want to hear,” she said. “You can experiment and go beyond your imagination.”
She wrote and produced “Sweet Sorrow” in a full 24 hours.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. At the end of that period, she put the song away, in effect to let it rest. “Sometimes I overdo things,” she said. “My daughter said, ‘Don’t play with it anymore. You’re going to ruin it.’”
But taking the song back out, she realized it needed one more element, “something to bring it home, more into the spiritual world.”
She added parts of the spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” but also aspects of mantras. At the very end, she also asked for another musician — Jeff Moro of The Recess Bureau — to lay down a bass part “just to tighten it up a bit.” And the song was done.
“This song is a chant for me,” Thabisa said. “What I felt in my spirit was a release of those thoughts, a release of pain. They need to be put to bed, to be forgiven, so I can move forward and embrace what’s in front of me.”
The song is something of an encapsulation of where Thabisa stands as a musician.
“That’s why I decided to call this song ‘Sweet Sorrow,’” she said. “It is beautiful, but it is coming from a place of sorrow. It embodies both of those traits.” That mixture is drawn directly from her own experiences. “I’ve lived a good life, but I’ve lived a painful life, too. I don’t want to dwell on those pains and hardships,” she said. “I finally can forgive all of those things — I’m not really there yet,” but this song, and her music, could serve as “my spiritual mantra to get to that place.”
Thabisa has found the pandemic to be a time of introspection. “I’m learning not to be too hard on myself,” she said. “We’re so mean to ourselves.” In the months of relative quiet, she said, “I’ve managed to talk to myself more. I’m trying now to understand what it means not to be too harsh,” and at the same time, “trying not to inflate my ego with self-righteousness…. I call attention to myself so I can rebuild myself.”
“It’s exciting but at the same time it’s scary,” she continued. “I’ve been trying to create a path, even though I’m not sure what that path is. I’m finding the answers little by little, putting down the bricks one at a time. I’m on a journey, and maturity is catching up with me…. What am I about? What is my purpose, and how do I link the music to that purpose?”
These questions are central to the music Thabisa wants to make next. Having written, performed, and produced three songs herself, she sees an album in the making.
“When I recorded my two albums, I was young,” Thabisa said of the two albums she made in South Africa, The Journey (2013) and Eyodidi (2015). “I wasn’t exposed to conversations that really make me think about what life is all about.”
Now, she said, “I really have to think before I sing.” Why perform? Why do the work? “My music is for everyone,” she continued. “My music is for you, because I realize that I am somebody, and I have a story.” Presented the right way, her story can “help open up their minds. It’s for inspiring.”
Part of her audience is still in South Africa, among the people she grew up with. “When I think about my peers that I left in the township I came from, I want to inspire them.” Thabisa’s own story is familiar to them because they lived it with her. “We were all together, playing,” she said, even as they were surrounded by abuse and hardship, unemployment and teen pregnancies.
She still calls her childhood friends to keep in touch, and “they tell me they are proud of me,” she said. “I tear up every time…. I want them to realize their own dreams.”
Thabisa wants the next miles on her musical path to reflect these truths. “This is where my maturity comes in,” she said. “When you are going to to truthful, it’s not always going to be nice.”
So “the album that’s going to come — I want it to be something unique. I’m over trying to create to just satisfy people, while creating with a heavy heart.” She is aiming for her third album to be something different, more nourishing. “I know it’s going to heal me. This is going to be my church, my soft place of landing.”
Thabisa also has ideas about how to present the music, in a staging that’s centered as much on storytelling as music. “I want it to be like a book, a film,” she said. “I want to be able to act it. Sometimes I envision myself at Long Wharf Theatre, performing my album. That is my vision for it. I’m going to cross my fingers and hope that I can make it the way I want.”
She wants her next album, in short, to be “a place where people discover who Thabisa is. I’m hoping with my third album I am able to introduce myself.”
Thabisa is planning a Q&A about “Sweet Sorrow” on Dec. 20. For more information, find her on social media or sign up for her newsletter through her website.