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Photo: Manchester Collective/Phil Sharp

Performing with Manchester Collective in 2019 for the revival of his 2018 work Sirocco

During the final decades of the apartheid regime, many cultural and political forces around the
world turned their back on South Africa in protest. The flourishing of cooperation and artistic
exchange that followed the introduction of majority rule brought with it a genre of music that, from
the late 1990s, grew to dominate the country’s musical tastes. ‘House music was everywhere,’
Selaocoe says. ‘It had a huge influence on me; the African origins of its sound and rhythms all
seemed to make sense with my growing interest in traditional music. House is music for partying,
but when we were getting to know it there was also a sense in which it felt as if we were speaking
to our ancestors. We’d dance in groups and suddenly someone would jump into the middle of the
circle, which sounds like they were showing off, but it wasn’t like that. They were just expressing
themselves.’

From the throngs of the township church to the transcendental power of house, it’s clear that
Selaocoe has never been a stranger to letting music embody the inner self. ‘Our parents would
always encourage us to come out of our skin, whether we were at a party or celebrating a
traditional ceremony at home,’ he explains. ‘The drive to be different from the rest was everywhere
across our community.’ As anyone who has seen Selaocoe perform will know, his presence on stage
is accompanied by an extraordinary degree of unselfconsciousness that radiates out into the
audience. ‘Part of my job is giving people permission to express themselves, to explore what they
thought were their limits. When you open up, others around you can do the same.’ Though met
with initial hesitation in places, the irresistible urge to move coursed through the crowd at
Selaocoe’s Proms performance, too, bringing an unusually free-flowing air to the proceedings.