Two decades since the release of her seminal debut solo album Zabalaza, the iconic Thandiswa Mazwai marks the occasion with 2024’s Sankofa. An excavatory endeavour yoking the traditional and contemporary, Sankofa traverses geographies, genres and eras. The album’s sonic foundations are primarily archival—a montage of field recordings, speech extracts and indigenous instrumentation. The resultant compositions, recorded across Johannesburg, Dakar and New York, capture a sense of the diasporic through an elegant assembly of polyrhythms and bewitching melodies. As the interplay of amahubo, umrhube, kora, ngoni and synths ensues, the nostalgic artfully coalesces with the modern. While the act of “going back and fetching what has been left behind” is apparent in the music, Mazwai simultaneously evaluates the past in an abstract sense. The notion of a political dream deferred permeates the lamentations of “emini” and “kunzima: dark side of the rainbow”, which occur after the cautionary words contained in “Biko speaks”. “kulungile” looks inward meanwhile; a healing balm for Mazwai’s inner-child before a return to collective liberation on the stirring “children of the soil”. It’s in these instances that Mazwai transcends, by situating the music where past lessons, present interruptions and future possibilities intersect. This is the context within which Mazwai places “with love to Makeba”, an homage to a musical lineage that includes Mama Madosini, Bra Hugh Masekela and Mam’ Busi Mhlongo. By imbuing Sankofa with the ethea of such forebearers across arrangements crafted by producers Meshell Ndengeocello, Nduduzo Makhathini and Tendai Shoko, generations are bridged and time is bent. This process is emblematic of the archaeological preoccupations of Sankofa, as reclamations of sounds, moments, places and people inform Thandiswa Mazwai’s imagination of what we could become.