Feel it with Leon John’s new album

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Any musician will testify to the constant onslaught of opinions and pressure on their path to artistic self-definition. But some musicians have an almost hallowed understanding of themselves; they exist inside and outside of definitions. 

Leon John Takudzwa Hwacha, known as Leon John, is a Zimbabwe-born, South African based singer-songwriter who treads inside and outside of definitions. His sound incorporates familiar styles found in soul, jazz, opera and gospel. But its lineage is rooted in African genres such as Chimurenga, Zilin and traditional Xhosa overtone singing.  

“I could convincingly argue that all my songs are 18th century operatic arias and no one would be able to tell me differently. There is a very fine line between perception and intention, and I prefer to allow my audience’s perception rule,” says the singer. 

His debut album, Licence to Feel, explores family, despair, healing and love. The album continues with the same overarching sentiment in his debut EP, To Be Continued, released in 2018. 

“If this album is a full stop then To Be Continued was a comma. I would say that both projects will always occupy a specific place in the time of my life,” he says.

During the album’s listening session, our childhood favourite snacks and confectionery are scattered on the dining room table: Fizz pops, Fizzers, apple munch and Sippy sherbet. The nostalgia is instant, swooping us back to our childhood imaginations, the screeching delights of swinging on trees, the anticipation of after school and the naivety of then. But most of all the colourful mess represents a time before we learnt the shame of feelings. 

“In the years of making this album, I realised that a large part of finding and reclaiming my licence to feel was memory work. I wanted those treats and sweets to be a trigger both to myself but also to the people that I shared that evening with, a sort of memory anchor point to take us back then and allow our adult minds to revisit childhood memories through the relatively safe trigger that is sweets,” says the singer. 

A pivotal moment in his life that he recalled during the recording of the album happened when he was three years old. He remembers his father uttering words that live under his skin, “Stop crying and speak to me properly! I don’t respond to the tears of anyone over the age of three.” Leon John is adamant that these words from his father have led to this body of work.

Have It Out, the album’s opener, is a subdued confrontational ballad quietly accompanied by Thato Mokoena’s acoustic guitar. The song calls on the singer’s parents to have the conversation they never had an opportunity to have. 

“Ulife uyagowa and I didn’t have the time to wait for it to become easier to speak to my parents directly on the distant so I wrote Have it Out so I could free myself in the here and now; to take my feelings into my own hands and give u-inner wam’ his peace,” he says about the imaginary but real nature of the opener. 

Have it Out is a smart opener because it epitomises the inherent theme that underpins the album — accountability. We often consider accountability as an exchange that happens with another, but the singer holds himself up to the light and accounts to himself too. The follow up song, titled Lies, continues to heighten the sense of accountability but this time he repositions the lens to address the saccharine lies his parents told him about the world to protect him — but at what cost when the world is so unkind the song suggests. 

“You told me lies. Papa told lies,” he sings alongside a sparse guitar.

By the third song, Black Sunrise (demo), one realises that the album is purposefully bare to forefront the vocals. Leon John’s textured and sonorous voice pummels the air on every song, with stirring precision. His voice has a haunting emphasis in its timbre that feels oddly consolatory too. Centering vocals summons the listener to focus on the lyrics but with Licence to Feel, he honours his feelings by letting us truly hear him. 

The emotional vastness of the album is captured in troughs and peaks from the stinging yet unfettered longing of Looking for You to the cheeky Take Your Meds and the ancestral Mabasa, a cover of the 1999 Oliver Mtukudzi song, lamenting the HIV/Aids crisis. 

The singer counts Mtukudzi’s writing as being exemplary in his role as a social commentator and archivist. The song also later interpolates Jabu Khanyile’s Mmalo We, that further highlights the sonic cannon he draws inspiration from, which includes: Salif Keita, Angelique Kidjo, Ismael Lo and Hugh Masekela. Even in this genre vastness, the singer masters the art of maintaining a uniform earnestness that can be difficult to sustain in a body of work. 

At War, Alone and Paper Flame, feel as if they are parts of one long ballad he smashed into pieces and then rebuilt separately. 

At War, is a soaring duet with Khanyi, whose penetrating, crisp vocals compliment the muscularity of Leon John’s own. The well-structured nature of the duet belies the content of the song — a warring breakup. 

Alone charts a kind of acceptance to aloneness not loneliness. But the song sounds like loneliness maybe in part to Joseph Mthimunye’s singular bass guitar and Leon John’s airy background vocals, giving it an introspective mood. 

The ability to trace the exact contours of your own hurt and acknowledge the sharp, jagged edges of your own villainy in another person’s version of the story is a feat in maturity and Leon John masters this on Paper Flame. Khanyi appears again, supporting with background vocals that lengthen the song’s effect. 

What a Life, the most jovial of all the songs, closes off the album with its groovy strokes of sentimentality. Upbeat hope thumps throughout the song and commemorating one’s survival concludes this part of Leon John’s story. 

Leon John feels something big and with Licence to Feel and asks us: “Did you feel it too?” The integrity and complexity the album gives to embracing feelings as a form of healing childhood and just being-alive traumas is rendered through his penmanship and voice. 

The album is a fascinating contribution to the contemporary South African music soundscape with its familiar but refreshing perspective. I hope when he performs these songs he makes them bigger and wider, because they do lend themselves to live performances. His voice has the sturdiness to carry the drama.