‘Healing Voices’ is such a vivid and vibrant album. It marks the first full length collaboration between ESINAM Dogbatse, a Belgian-Ghanian multi-instrumentalist, and Sibusile Xaba, a guitarist of Kwazulu-Natal South African background. They bring a huge array of influences to the record: electro, spiritual jazz and roots music including Ghanian highlife and traditional songs from Zulu and Ewe culture. The modern touches mean that the music never sounds hidebound while the production mix successfully balances intimacy and electricity, sounding as if they are playing in your room. Over the course of eleven songs, they create a range of moods and styles, often shifting radically within each song.
Discussing the record, Xaba states that it is about freedom and unconditional love and that the songs came to them effortlessly. That ease is instantly apparent. As a mantra for the album, ‘Flowing keep flowing’ is an apposite introduction. Starting with Xaba’s fingerpicked guitar, his shouts and cries adding to the dynamic. Dogatse’s flute twirls and twills beguilingly, percussion beats rhythmically while gospel backing vocals that bring to mind ‘The Indestructible Beat of Soweto’ album add to an enjoyably complex but cohesive stew. As will become a feature of ‘Healing Voices’, the next track heads off in a different direction. ‘Dololo’ relies on heavy percussion and stormy electric guitar while the harsh-soft contrast between the two vocal styles creates further dynamism.
A rearrangement of a traditional song, ‘Yema’ begins with handclaps and chants that percussion weaves around. Flute lines appear followed by intricately plucked instruments. The song’s energy is infectious and has the feel of a communal piece performed outdoors; it is easy to imagine an audience eagerly participating. Originally released as a debut single in 2024, a line in ‘Africa Wola’ gives the album its title and has Dogbatse calling for peace. From its soothing spiritual beginnings, it introduces blistering guitar runs and repetitive percussion to enhance its message.
From its growling rhythm and sharp whistle blasts, ‘Akadi’ is the album’s most abrasive track, also utilising dub-like echo, although the spiritual backing vocals help to create a multifaceted tone. By far the longest track at nearly six minutes time, ‘Umhale’ has more space to develop variations within a theme, the two artists repeating the title word, a jittery repeating guitar, flute and other mouth instruments, all serving to create a mesmerising effect.
As might be guessed from its title, ‘Inner-Cosmic-Imaginations’ is the most fragmentary, non-linear track with Xaba’s incantation of closing eyes and giving way to black magic. With flutes forming a threatening spell, menacing percussion and throbbing electronics, it is discombobulating. Showing their merciless inconsistency of mood, it is followed by the sweet and stripped back ‘Ready to love’, the bassline inspired by the rhythm of Dogbatse’s baby’s movement in her womb while Xaba adds vocals in Zulu about the pure love flowing from an open heart.
“In the beginning the vibration was very low,” Xaba intones setting the scene for the percussive ‘Send it’. The vocal interplay on ‘Vuma’ is a treat and the flute is deployed with a demonstrativeness last seen in the days of Jethro Tull. The record ends with ‘Uhambo’, a heavily percussive desert blues piece, the guitar twanging like a garden rake and the ubiquitous flute decorating the spaces.
Speaking about their approach, Dogbatse describes making music as art and medicine. Playing this music makes her feel better and listening to ‘Healing Voices’ also has a galvanising effect. While some might prefer more consistency of mood, those like me who enjoy being taken on a sprawling journey can be constantly thrilled. It is an album rich in emotion, full of life and diversity of sounds. ESINAM and Sibusile Xaba are a winning combination to be relished now whilst also looking forward to what they might do next.
ESINAM and Sibusile Xaba: Healing Voices – Out 25 April 2025 (W.E.R.F)
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
