Urban Zulu is a hybrid feature documentary film about the sensitive sound sensation, Busi Mhlongo. Called to music at a young age, she overcomes all odds to chart a stellar path from rural KZN to the top of the world music in the Netherlands.
The film combines interviews, never-before-heard recordings, rare archival footage and her best-known songs with mesmerising live performance footage.
Hailing from rural KwaZulu-Natal, she is thirteen when attends the showing of King Kong the musical in Durban, starring Miriam Makeba.
A life-long fascination with the stage begins. In her 50-year artistic journey her gigantic voice bends every genre it touches — 1960s South African musical theatre and jazz, Black American soul, London's Afro Rock scene, the world music circuit of 1980s Amsterdam.
Yet the industry that celebrates her also exploits her. Cancer strikes like a sacred illness. She returns home to Durban and rediscovering her authentic self through the ancient Zulu music.
Mhlongo weaves together music, fashion, styles, generations and time epochs into a unique Urban Zulu art aesthetic. She charts to number one in the world with the Urban Zulu album (1999).
Mhlongo would overcomes barriers of discrimination, gender suppression, music industry exploitation, the alienation of exile, cancer and addiction to achieve her dream. She has almost mythological Afro-futuristic status amongst the youth of today. She is likened to the goddess uNomkhubulwane, a completion of all opposites.
Yet, Mhlongo dies in 2010 from cancer, still short of the recognition she deserves. More than a biographical music documentary, Urban Zulu (2028) is the restoration of a legacy. Now, 17 years after her death, on the eve of what would have been her 80th birthday, colleagues unite to re-awaken her legacy for the sake of our musical future.
Summary
Urban Zulu, the Busi Mhlongo Story is originated, written and produced by Durban born Sausage Film Company including life-time award winning poet and heritage practitioner Vusi Mchunu and South African Jazz author and trumpet player, Struan Douglas. The film is directed in Holland by the Spirit of Africa Series creator and apprentice marabout, Ton van der Lee. The film is directed in South Africa by Emmy award winning former political exile, Rehad Desai. His activist films include Bushman’s Secret and Born into Struggle.
The style is of a hybrid bio-documentary film, that blends observational and interview-based storytelling with electrifying performance sequences and never-before-seen archives to resurrect Busi’s multi-facetted artistic Urban Zulu appeal. The controlling idea is Busi’s story and the restoration of her legacy on her own terms. The dramatic question of freedom is viewed from musical, emotional and political perspectives.
Founded in 2020, Sausage Films’ mission of iZazi, is to preserve and promote South African cultural heritage, by spreading an authentic African voice of wisdom.
https://sausagefilms.co.za/
