Prophecies of a guitar sangoma. . . Sylent Nqo brings debut album

Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
HAVING long been hailed as one of the country’s unsung music geniuses, guitarist and music composer Sylent Nqo has finally set down his credentials as one of Zimbabwe’s contemporary music luminaries, with the release of his debut album, Sylent Treatment.

The album was released across digital platforms on 24 May and spans the length of his career, from the time he picked up a guitar seriously as a teenager following an injury sustained during a high school rugby game.

Since that twist of fate, Nqo has gone on to work with some of the country’s most renowned musicians, including renowned artistes such as the late Chiwoniso Maraire, Plaxedes Wenyika, Mokoomba, Diana Samkange and Audius Mtawarira

In an interview on ZTN’s Morning Rush last week, Sylent Nqo, known also as the Guitar Sangoma, said that he had turned to music after his injury on the rugby field. Previously, he had looked at it as a hobby, and a continuation of family tradition, as his grandfather had played the same instrument before him.

“Marimba was my first instrument and then percussion. I was moving from instrument to instrument until I got grounded with the guitar. My first incident with the guitar was knowing that my granddad was a guitarist as well in Mozambique.

He did not do it commercially but he played guitar and I think when my parents bought me my first acoustic guitar I started practising and whatnot, but I wasn’t really into the music thing.

I was a rugby player. At that time, I was about nine years old, but I started doing it professionally when I was about 14. That’s when I started playing gigs.  What got me to that point was a rugby injury. My usual explanation is that music then chose me because after the rugby injury I didn’t know what to do,” he said.

Turning to his debut album, Sylent Nqo said that the songs that made the final cut in the nine-track effort were a product of his larger catalogue, as his new music fed from his old music.

“I have made hundreds of songs that eventually made the nine on the album. My songs were picking from each other and I recorded and composed so many. (The songs) wrote these nine and they also have skeletons that are writing another album already,” he said.

Included in the album is Bitter, a song that the Guitar Sangoma says he began making at the infancy of his career.

“I was 15 once and I felt once and kept feeling . . .  It’s a story that kept evolving and maturing until it finally made the album,” he said.

Sylent Nqo said telling stories, whether his or others’, was his true gift as a musician.

“I guess that’s the gift. You could tell me a story and I could write around it or I find it easy to articulate a person’s story.

“That’s just my creative process. It’s either I have experienced something first-hand or it’s a story I’ve heard but if the words and the melody sound perfect then it will be perfect,” he said.

The ace music composer acknowledged Let Me Love You as one of the quickest songs that he has ever made, while he also admitted that he met fellow collaborator, Isadora, at a time when he was down with depression at the onset of Covid-19 lockdowns.

“2019, I’m depressed because everything I had planned has been cancelled because of Covid-19 so I started doing challenges on Instagram and she participated and then we started talking on Facetime and stuff and we made the song,” he said.