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Music
A successful gospel artist, Bongani Rakhivhani (39), is a musician who will not trade music for anything else.
He told Limpopo Mirror that he fell in love with music at an early age. However, it was in 1995 when his late brother, Oupa Rakhivhani, taught him to play the guitar skills that he started to see music from a different perspective.
“I carried on playing the instrument and my love for strumming a guitar developed,” he said. “On my musical journey I also learned to play other instruments in church, such drums and bass guitar.”
He was a member of the school choir at Ladzani Primary School and Robert Mmbulungeni Secondary School, where he honed his vocal skills. “With music, I found a way of serving my God,” he said. “I choose to sing gospel because it defines who I am much better.”
A resident of Thengwe village, Rakhivhani hadsjust released his debut album, entitled Your name is Jesus. He said that the album was doing well in the market. “I am really happy with the way it is selling for now,” he said. “People are buying my CD.”
The album comprises ten songs which all speak about the love of God for humankind. The singer said that the album was good in that it was semi-live, which means that they played live instruments during recording in the studio.
He said that even though all 10 songs where good, there were two songs that were stand-out tracks for him; they are Gone too soon and Mukhethwakhethwa. “I dedicated Gone too soon to the memory of my late brother, who had taught me how to play the guitar,” he said. “This is the song that brings back memories of the loved ones whom we lost along the way of living.”
He fused marimba tones into the song Mukhethwakhethwa, to make it sound more traditional in a sense.
He stated that even people who had never shown any interest in gospel music were buying his album because they found it different from what they had heard before in the market. “Some say they are buying it because of the good messages while others speak about quality sounds,” he said.
Rakhivhani can be reached on 0792619898, 0825393703 or [email protected].
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Bongani Rakhivhani.
By: Tshifhiwa Mukwevho
Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.
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