Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

First time Gram­my award win­ner, Nom­ce­bo will be grac­ing our pop­u­la­tion with her mag­nan­i­mous pres­ence for her first ever T&T Car­ni­val. While Jerusale­ma took the world by storm, Bayethe (which means Ac­claim in the Zu­lu lan­guage) gave her the GRAM­MY award!

With­in the mon­u­men­tal cel­e­bra­tions in South Africa, singer and song­writer Nom­ce­bo Zikode shared ex­clu­sive in­sights with WE, Sun­day Guardian. Her first vis­it to T&T in Ju­ly 2022 left an in­deli­ble im­pres­sion on her and she ex­cit­ed­ly de­clared, ‘I ab­solute­ly love your coun­try. I love the Tri­ni ac­cent, the street food and the peo­ple are so very friend­ly!”

Her warm, ef­fer­ves­cent na­ture leaped off her words as WE deep dived in­to her jour­ney as a glob­al trend­set­ter, a pow­er­house vo­cal­ist, a song­writer, a moth­er, a wife, a hu­man­i­tar­i­an and an am­bas­sador with AIDON­IC, and so much more.

Let’s get to know Nom­ce­bo Zikode…

“I grew up in a sim­ple home, but I was al­ways a hap­py child. It didn’t both­er me if my school shirt was torn or if I didn’t have new shoes, I nev­er felt ashamed. At school if I was asked to sing in front of every­one, I did it be­cause I loved to sing. At that age, ma­te­r­i­al things nev­er both­ered me es­pe­cial­ly if I could not af­ford them. My pas­sion was singing. I knew if I want­ed to be­come a singer that I had to work very hard from in­cep­tion to achieve it. Af­ter I grad­u­at­ed with my de­gree, I was a vo­cal­ist/back­ground singer for 15 years. Even though my jour­ney was chal­leng­ing, I ac­quired knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence to pur­sue my love for singing. I fo­cused on my goals, fol­lowed the path that led me to suc­cess in my ca­reer and this has made me the woman I am to­day.”

Your IG re­veals your in­cred­i­ble love for fash­ion, how would you de­scribe your style?

“My style re­flects who I am – a strong woman, a strong moth­er and a pow­er­ful artist. It is bold, colour­ful, edgy, trendy and rep­re­sents my African cul­ture. As a per­son­al pref­er­ence, I do not wear short clothes and do not like to ex­pose my body.”

With­in your aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney, you achieved an In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy De­gree, what was the piv­ot that led you to mu­sic?

“I was very de­ter­mined and worked fever­ish­ly to ob­tain my In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy De­gree at Ha­vat­e­ch Col­lege, Jo­han­nes­burg. Af­ter achiev­ing my de­gree, I felt em­pow­ered and more con­fi­dent, so then I pro­ceed­ed to fol­low my love and pas­sion for singing. My mu­si­cal jour­ney has not al­ways been a smooth one, but God con­tin­ues to open doors that took me to greater heights. Dur­ing these last 15 years, I gained so much ex­pe­ri­ence and knowl­edge which al­lowed me to pur­sue my singing ca­reer fur­ther.”

As a well-known vo­cal­ist, her ca­reer piv­ot­ed af­ter Nom­ce­bo won a tal­ent com­pe­ti­tion on Ukhozi FM, a South African na­tion­al ra­dio sta­tion in 2003 this helped her se­cure a spot in the many gospel bands.

While you are known for the hit song, Jerusale­ma, you al­so serve in oth­er po­si­tions, share with us more on your role as a Good Am­bas­sador with AIDON­IC?

“I start­ed in Ju­ly 2021 with two hu­man­i­tar­i­an projects with the as­sis­tance of AIDON­IC in my home­town of Ham­mars­dale, KwaZu­lu-Na­tal. This or­gan­i­sa­tion of­fers aid through a dig­i­tal plat­form for so­cial fundrais­ing and last-mile aid dis­tri­b­u­tion to low-in­come fam­i­lies.”

AIDON­IC’s goal is to help hu­man­i­tar­i­an or­gan­i­sa­tions world­wide to reach more vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple with in­creased ef­fi­cien­cy and less costs whilst en­sur­ing full end-to-end trans­paren­cy. They cre­ate and de­liv­er valu­able so­cial and de­vel­op­ment im­pact to achieve the Unit­ed Na­tions 17 Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals by 2030.

This year, 2023 - the Unit­ed Na­tions’ theme for In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day is Dig­i­tALL - In­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy for gen­der equal­i­ty, what ad­vice would you share to those who still be­lieve IT is not for women?

“The world we live in to­day is con­stant­ly chang­ing for women across the globe. We are break­ing more bound­aries and are con­tin­u­ous­ly striv­ing to be recog­nised for our ac­com­plish­ments and achieve­ments. For those who still be­lieve IT is not for women, well that’s very dis­ap­point­ing but I urge to re­con­sid­er your point of view, es­pe­cial­ly to­wards the young in­dus­tri­ous women of the fu­ture. I use my­self as an ex­am­ple: a fe­male artist in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try who con­tin­ues to work twice as hard in com­par­i­son to male artist just to build a name for my­self. The jour­ney was chal­leng­ing but I per­se­vered and in re­turn, my hard work gave me great suc­cess by win­ning a Gram­my Award.”

On the night of the Gram­my Awards, how did you feel in the mo­ment you heard your name?

“It was the best feel­ing in the world when I was nom­i­nat­ed for a Gram­my. How­ev­er, when I heard my name called as the win­ner of “Best Glob­al Mu­sic Per­for­mance” I was im­mense­ly ec­sta­t­ic, I felt so proud that all my hard work brought me such an enor­mous re­ward.”

At the 65th edi­tion of the Gram­my Awards, that took place in Los An­ge­les last Sun­day, in her ac­cep­tance speech, along­side Za­kes Bantwi­ni and Wouter Keller­man, Nom­ce­bo de­clared on the stage, “Thank you so much to God, I once gave the world a song, that took the world by storm, the song that got us all to­geth­er, but I didn’t get this nom­i­na­tion or this award. But God was say­ing to me, ‘Don’t wor­ry my daugh­ter, I will give you Bayethe.”

What is the thing that you are most proud of with the uni­ver­sal suc­cess of Jerusale­ma?

“My proud­est mo­ments from the suc­cess of Jerusale­ma” es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing Covid-19 and how this song res­onat­ed with mil­lions of peo­ple world­wide dur­ing such a dif­fi­cult time. Every­where I vis­it­ed, my fans told me that “Jerusale­ma” gave them hope, com­fort, en­cour­age­ment to hold on and keep pray­ing for their fam­i­ly and friends. I was deeply touched and I be­lieve God gave me this song that helped many peo­ple in the world.”

Her time in the mu­sic in­dus­try has es­tab­lished Nom­ce­bo as a pow­er­ful vo­cal­ist and an un­stop­pable force, re­leas­ing great mu­sic that has kept fans on the dance floor.

Jerusale­ma was record­ed on 11 Au­gust, 2019 by South African DJ and record pro­duc­er Mas­ter KG and fea­tured Nom­ce­bo. Af­ter be­ing post­ed on so­cial me­dia, it sur­passed one mil­lion views in just the first week. The #JerusalemaChal­lenge took it to an­oth­er lev­el, go­ing vi­ral dur­ing mid-2020.

Her de­but stu­dio al­bum Xo­la Moya Wam was re­leased on 21 Au­gust, 2020. It fea­tures Mas­ter KG, Makhadzi and Bon­go Beats. The al­bum was cer­ti­fied plat­inum af­ter a month of its re­lease with sales of 150 000 copies.

If you can col­lab­o­rate with any­one, who would that be? Which 3 per­sons?

“Be­y­once, Chris Brown & Davi­do.”

Re­turn­ing to Trinidad & To­ba­go, what’s your top 5 things to do while you are here?

• I want to go to Mara­cas Beach

• Try more Tri­ni cui­sine, I love dou­bles, roti and chick­en.

• Go to the steel pan yard and try play­ing pan

• Vis­it the Pitch Lake

• Go to the Buc­coo Reef and Ny­lon Pool

Nom­ce­bo shared in­spir­ing last words with our WE, Sun­day Guardian read­ers….

“Set goals for your­self, cre­ate a plan on how you are go­ing to achieve it and take it one step at a time. Noth­ing comes eas­i­ly, so keep push­ing your­self and work dili­gent­ly at it, then even­tu­al­ly you will achieve your goals and dreams. In the be­gin­ning of my singing ca­reer, I kept on im­prov­ing my vo­cals, my sound writ­ing and took many singing jobs to get my name out there. Just keep on work­ing hard and even­tu­al­ly every­thing will fall in­to place.”