He’s a relative newcomer to the global stage but in his native South Africa Nakhane, 30, is an LGBTQ trailblazer with a startling voice, in more ways than one. His second album, You Will Not Die, documents a turbulent adolescence spent wrestling with sexuality and Christianity, and is delivered with heart-stopping fragility. He has been openly gay since his 20s, but there was a time when, he has said, “I was convinced I would be able to ‘heal’ my homosexuality. I lived in constant fear; controlling myself at all times.”
By contrast, his music is fearless – emphatic Perfume Genius pop chronicling a journey to self-acceptance via sweeping strings, 80s synths, mbira-style percussion and the eventual rejection of his religious beliefs. The electronics are a recent addition, after years as an acoustic singer-songwriter in Johannesburg. But after making a club hit with house DJ Black Coffee in 2015, and becoming disillusioned with the folk scene, he ditched the twiddly guitars for strutting glam and electro flourishes.
His album is a fitting accompaniment to another move that’s ratcheting up his notoriety: he also has a starring role in The Wound, a film about the taboo of being a young gay man in the Xhosa community (South Africa’s second largest ethnic population, to which Nakhane also belongs), and as a result has been subject to months of protests across the Cape. But Nakhane isn’t about to let small-mindedness hold him back “I refuse to hide who I am,” he wrote on Facebook recently. That’s the talk of a real star in the making. • Nakhane plays at the Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen on 20 March. You Will Not Die is out on 16 March
