Artist Bio:
When Ishmael bounced onto the stage at the FNB South African Music Awards to collect the award for best R&B Album for MI HOUSE, it was a very public confirmation of something those in music have been aware of for a while: that this singer, songwriter, producer and performer packs a musical talent of staggering proportions.
For several years now, Ishmael has gradually been making his mark on South African music in a way that few other performers can match. Whether it's hip-hop with Prophets of Da City, kwaito with Skeem or South African-tinged R&B on his solo projects, Ishmael is skilled, innovative and just plain fabulous. His musical touch is contributing to the rapid evolution of homegrown sound.
In many ways - and not to sound too trite - it's astonishing that Ishmael has come this far.
Growing up for Ishmael Morabe was an experience defined by struggle and adversity. Moving from place to place, from Klerksdorp to a village near Volmaranstad to Rustenberg and Tsakane near Brakpan, Ishmael often stayed with his grandmother or his aunt and uncle while his parents worked "far away."
"The fact is I grew up poor. I remember at times being incredibly hungry when I was a teenager. I survived by popping into neighbors' houses at mealtimes. But you know, I didn't know any better, so to me it wasn't really a big deal. Most people I grew up with in the village had very little."
The one constant in Ishmael's life back then was music. From the sounds rattling in the house when his mother ran a shebeen, where they played music from Ishmael's major influences like Michael Jackson and The Fresh Prince (Will Smith), music fuelled Ishmael's days. "When I was about 16 and first saw people performing on television, I thought that I'd like to see myself on stage."
In spite of tinkering around with some mates on a homemade guitar and possessing a startlingly good voice, Ishmael transformed himself into a break-dancer at 18 and began making regular trips from Rustenberg to Johannesburg with school friend Lucky Mach (now also of Skeem) to dance in Hillbrow's many clubs.
"The club life was heavy, but Lucky and I would go there to dance. We didn't drink or anything like that. We lived for dancing."
Johannesburg's mixture of music and clubs proved a heady attraction, and before long Ishmael was in town every weekend, dancing and free-styling on the mike and attempting to hold on to a weekend job pumping petrol. Soon Ishmael had hooked up with Junior (Boom Shaka), and the pair danced and free-styled their way through many nights until they careened into POC in Johannesburg for a gig sometime in 1992. It was a meeting that considerably altered the course of Ishmael's life.
Recognizing Junior and Ishmael's verve and style, POC asked the two to become the group's dancers, and suddenly Ishmael was living in Cape Town with the group, hanging out in the studio and grabbing his share of mike time, singing and rapping. "From just being a club guy, I found myself performing overseas with people like James Brown and The Fugees and playing countries like Norway, England and Germany. It was incredible."
In the mid-'90s Ishmael moved back to Johannesburg and entered yet another musical terrain: DJ-ing at Yeoville's Dreamroom club, MC-ing over mikes and hooking up with Lucky and Jacob to form Skeem.
Much of Skeem's EP Waar Was Jy? evolved in the studio, a creative process, which remains Ishmael's preferred way of working. The EP's title tracks proved to be a mighty and compelling song that seared the group into the consciousness of South Africa's growing number of kwaito fans. Several years after helping define the genre, Ishmael himself remains convinced of kwaito's importance. "Its vibe is totally South African, and that's very important. We have to be supportive of it and play our part in ensuring kwaito evolves".
The idea of a solo project had been brewing in Ishmael's mind for some time. In between his live and recording commitments to POC and Skeem, Ishmael and an impressive gathering of talents drawn from the Ghetto Ruff stable (Kaybee, Shaheen, Kyllex, among others) made the studio their home and recorded Mi House.
The album was foreshadowed by the "Jo'burg City" single in 1997,which gave notice, through a slow-grooved homage to the city that helped turn him into an artist, of the arrival of a major new South African talent.
On its release, Mi House did not disappoint. At 16-tracks (including "Jo'burg City"), the album unveiled Ishmael's often achingly beautiful, always distinctive vocals, along with a songwriting and production ability of real substance. "Let Me," an uncluttered song underpinned by the whispered backing vocals and a hauntingly repetitive drum sample, marked Ishmael as a South African artist able to deliver songs that can easily slip through international borders and across radio formats. And 1999 shaped up to be the year in which this aspect of his talent was more than consolidated.
Ishmael has contributed several storming tracks to the enormously successful "Yizo Yizo" sound track - one with sometime creative partner Amu titled "The Good and the Bad" as well as collaboration with Ghetto Luv, "I Don't Want" and a mix of "Mi House."
August 1999 also saw the release of his solo EP, Beautiful Thing, which simultaneously situates Ishmael back into his kwaito roots, while several tracks are destined to become South African, if not global, anthems appealing to a dizzyingly broad cross-spectrum of music lovers. The EP again found Ishmael teaming up with Kaybee as well as Ghetto Luv's Wanda, who contributes the vocals.
In the year 2000, E'Smile/Ishmael released a new album, Iskhathi Sa Khona , considered to be a South African R&B classic. The plug track, "Iskhathi Sa Khona," became the summer track for the year 2000. He reached a new breakthrough in his music, and the album shows a startling maturity, appealing to a much larger audience.
Ishmael continues to work with POC and Skeem and performs live across the country and internationally.
"My life has never been about a plan. I just go with the flow and move from one thing to another as it rises," he says. " I never know what's going to show up around the corner."
Ishmael in the new millennium is currently in the studio cooking up new sounds to elevate his stature and his contribution in the ever-growing South Africa music scene. His first single, "Cell number, email address," has been pumping on every radio station from YFM to 5FM, which goes to prove that Ishmael has the most mass appeal of R&B singers in South Africa. —Courtesy Calabash Music
