Nakhane Makes Stadium-Sized Pop for the Intimacy of Tiny Gigs

This is a regular column where I'll mostly be writing about new music – not all the time – and feelings and how they both scrape an extra layer of enjoyment onto this whole existing thing. See you for the next one.

It all comes down to intimacy. Live gigs bang the hardest when you feel a connection with both the performer and the rest of the crowd. You already know the feeling. And I don’t mean intimacy in a ‘closing my eyes while that minor 7th chord and its accompanying vocal line cuts me into ribbons like a budget Edward Scissorhands.’ That’s great too, don’t get me wrong. But this sort of sensation isn’t centred on slow jams or piano ballads or minimal electronic sets where no smiling is allowed. It’s about a closeness you get at snug festival crowds, basement clubs and even mid-sized venues (as long as you’re standing in the pit).

That feeling of connection can come from screaming along to Thundercat while someone you’ve never met throws their arm over shoulder and you jump up and down in unison like puppies from the same litter. It can grow from being stunned into silence by an artist like rising Norwegian pop singer HALIE, who I recently saw in a converted cinema in Oslo. A particularly good DJ set can do it too. All of these sorts of show, though, make the most impact in small- to medium-sized venues. And I noticed this with a sudden clarity at a recent gig, where the incredibly talented, almost annoyingly breathtaking South African artist Nakhane practically sent ripples of emotion through a little London backroom – but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Let me say something unpopular now: I almost don’t see the point in stadium-sized gigs. Fans of the acts with audiences so massive that it’s only fair to book them in huge venues will probably shout me down for this (see you on Twitter!!). But transfer that tight audience-crowd dynamic to a huge venue, and I’m reeling. Lost. You ever sat in the nosebleed seats at London’s O2 Arena and been like, ‘yeah, I’m definitely in the same room as [insert megastar name] but I’ve just been watching the screen for the past 22 minutes, which may have been a weird thing to pay for’? No??

I understand the appeal of a show punctuated by pyrotechnics, costume changes and intricate, sometimes movable, stage sets. Look, I was one of the thousands of people who witnessed Kendrick Lamar’s dynamic, impassioned sets at the O2 in February: I get it. Spectacle is a delight. But… he felt so far away. It’s telling that some of the most memorable moments in a gigantic show so often stem from that fun thing where the performer shimmies down a platform extending into the crowd and is, briefly, within closer squinting distance (see: all your friends’ Insta stories when Kendrick rose up on a towering platform that extended towards the sky, near the centre of the ground-level pit).

And so, to Nakhane. Where to even begin with him? First: a week and a half ago, the 30-year-old released You Will Not Die, a second album of rich guitar and piano-led pop that glides from the bluesy dirge of “The Dead,” to delicately sung “Teen Prayer,” which references black South Africa’s deep choral arrangement tradition. He has an expansive, lightly husky voice that he slathers over music which can sound like the grainy guitar of early Arcade Fire one minute and then Perfume Genius’ orchestral, galactic pop the next. Glimmers of Prince’s sensuality, Rufus Wainwright’s open tales of guy-on-guy love and Anohni’s knack for delivering a vocal that knocks you sideways with a soft tap on the shoulder all appear in his work.

Second: If you live outside South Africa, you may not have heard about Nakhane before this year. But he’s well-known at home, an openly queer and brilliantly clever artist who released a debut album in 2013, wrote a novel published in 2015, collaborated with DJ Black Coffee (yep, who Drake tapped up for More Life) and played a lead role in award-winning 2017 film Inxeba: The Wound.

Third: he makes a tiny space – like the back room at Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen in east London, where I saw him play a stunning set last week – feel infinitely more worthwhile than a yawing arena. Over the duration of the gig, he seems to grow in size as he switches from singing to plucking his electric guitar to feeling out a piano line. I’m watching him towards the centre of the crowd, as he sends an energy that pushes out into the room like a marshmallow expanding before bursting point in a microwave.

“I have to say, I expected less of you,” he says, addressing us for the first time. He’s just finished thumping, dark glam single “Interloper,” which he’s described as “a song about irrational jealousy and anonymous sex” and sounds a bit like Wild Beasts committing even more to shagging than normal. The room is so quiet between songs, and we all feel so close to one another that when someone in the crowd shouts out “fewer” to correct him, a few people laugh. We can all hear the punter’s interjection.

Nakhane replies: “OK, it’s not my first language, even though I sing in it,” quick to catch the near-heckle with a response. It’s a funny thing, watching a musician deal with a well-meaning but nonetheless annoying ‘well actually’ heckle at their own show. But that’s what small venues facilitate. This is the sort of gig where you can take in a full view of everyone else in the crowd by making a quick 180-degree arc from left to right. It’s the sort of gig where the performer-audience link is reinforced with a bond so tight that it can, in moments where a line is easily crossed, turn uncomfortable.

But I’m not one to talk: later, I pitch in too. After playing “New Brighton,” a song about his Eastern Cape upbringing that didn’t make the cut onto You Will Not Die, he whips off the oversized black suit jacket that he’d worn open, draped over high-waisted trousers. A leather strap running across his chest had peeked from between the jacket’s lapels, hinting at what I figured was a BDSM chest harness beneath. Minus the jacket, we can now see that the strap intersects with another two, one sitting snugly over each shoulder, while a metallic ring encircles each nipple. “Any questions?” he asks, after the reveal, smiling slyly. But he’s not kidding, and asks again, so I shout out “where’d you get the harness?” He laughs, before telling us that it’s – obviously – from a Soho sex shop.

He’s such an engaging performer, so adept at going from devastating personal lyrics to cracking jokes in the interim, that he leaves me torn. On the one hand, I want to forever enjoy watching him sing about learning to accept and love his queerness in a room private enough that I could reach up and touch him when he sits down onstage towards the end of the set. On the other, as his vibrato hits a nerve somewhere along my spine during slow-burning single “Presbyteria,” I immediately want him to play to 12,000 people at once. I want them all to know him, for him to sell out venues night after night and follow in the footsteps of the artists who’ve set out a path before him. Yet I know you can’t have both. For now, I’ll take drinking in his sets at this size, and will celebrate as they grow. Like soup, intimacy doesn’t travel well across long distances. But I’m eager for him to prove me wrong.

You Will Not Die is out now via BMG and it slaps.

You can find Tshepo thinking about chest harnesses on Twitter.