Vusi Mahlasela built his first guitar with tin and fishing line, played Mandela's inauguration and he plays the Iron Horse TONIGHT!

“Vusi has a sort of profound beauty about him. He has a light on… something he would share with Bob Marley, Neil Young, Marvin Gaye or Miles Davis.” -Dave Matthews

"Alternating Zulu with English, his gentle voice flowed from reedy tenor to light falsetto, while his nimble fretwork brought to mind the compositional strategies of Cat Stevens, Mississippi John Hurt, or Leadbelly." -Village Voice

Over a musically and socially consequential career, South African singer-songwriter and poet-activist Vusi Mahlasela has successfully followed his muse. That trust in his gift is at the root of his latest album, Guiding Star with guest appearances by his friend Dave Matthews, Allman Brothers guitarist Derek Trucks, Australian didgeridooist Xavier Rudd, singer-songwriter Jem and longtime friends and touring mates Ladysmith Black Mambazo.
Born Vusi Sidney Mahlasela Ka Zwane in 1965 in Lady Selborne, South Africa, Mahlasela became enchanted by music at an early age, building his first guitar out of tin and fishing line. Reared in Mamelodi Township, a vibrant artist community where he still resides, he gravitated toward poetry and songwriting as a teen, eventually joining youth organizations protesting South Africa’s separatist, white government.

Reading poems at night vigils, funerals and anti-Apartheid marches triggered a long streak of police harassment. Local police soon began requiring that he keep them abreast of his whereabouts at all times, and his poems and songs were routinely confiscated—forcing him to memorize his work. It was a time when people like him would “just disappear indefinitely,” he recalls, or, in Mahlasela’s case, be held for periods of time. “Somehow you get some sort of courage. You look at what’s happening to your comrades, and you see that their struggle has to be testified—and you don’t have to be afraid.”

In 1988, he joined the Congress of South African Writers, developing a new level of confidence as a poet and a writer. He struck up a creative friendship with South African poet Lesego Rampolokeng while falling under the spell of artists like Miriam Makeba and Phillip Tabane and the work of Victor Jara— all central influences on Mahlasela’s music and lyrics.

Mahlasela never knew his father, finally locating him in 2000, sadly, six months after his death. When he was in his early 20s, his mother collapsed in church, dying the same day, just a year after she’d proudly held his first recording in her hands and wept. He wrote the new song “River Jordan” for her, and it was with her inspiration and the motivation of leaders like Nelson Mandela that Mahlasela crafter his official debut, 1991’s When You Come Back.

After the end of Apartheid, Vusi performed at Mandela’s inauguration in 1994, and is now an ambassador to Mandela’s 46664 Foundation, a campaign to help raise Global awareness of Aids/ HIV. Mahlasela proudly promotes Mandela’s message at all of his performances. Having released a string of albums in South Africa, it wasn’t until the debut in 2003 of the documentary film Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony, a film that charts South Africans’ longtime struggle for racial equality, that Americans first glimpsed and heard Mahlasela.

Dave Matthews calls Vusi “one of the most important influences of my life.” Says Vusi: “I know that I have something that is like a borrowed fire from God. And I have to use it in a very positive way. Tickets Here.