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Every once in a while, you experience something for the first time and enjoy it so much that you are saddened by the fact that you will never again have the pleasure of a “first” with it.
That initial contact is life-altering and you spend the rest of your life straining to recreate the ecstasy of the moment.
It was in the summer of 2020 that I first heard the voice of British musician Jacob Banks.
A YouTube mix that began with crooners JP Cooper and Leon Bridges led to the voices of Banks, compatriots Grace Carter, Cynthia Erivo and the young Cat Burns.
That sonic journey also led to the discovery of the Arabic-influenced Canadian musicians Nemahsis and Faouzia.
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Keeping with the winning formula of YouTube mixes soon introduced me to the poetry of Safia Elhillo, Warsan Shire, Glori B and a wonderful collective of spoken word creatives who have been featured on Button Poetry and Write About Now – all of whom I recommend you listen to.
They may seem like surface-level artists to individuals who listen only to creatives with “depth and mystique”, but music, poetry, literature, gaming and other pastimes can be enjoyed without becoming a fanatic obsession, I’ve come to realise.
However, early last month I had the opportunity to become an obsessive fan when Banks blew through South Africa on a two-day tour of Johannesburg and Cape Town.
It is important to declare to the Banks team that, by this cropped version of a tour, they had better have been whetting our appetites for a longer visit in the future.
I must preface this next part, dear reader, by stating that I am a hopeless Banks fan. So, take my praise for him with a pinch of salt, or better yet, go and see him live to ascertain his worthiness.
It was March 3 and a 2 000-strong audience had bought tickets to the sold-out Johannesburg event almost two weeks in advance.
A line-up, including the hip-hop music ensemble Tumi and the Volume, kicked off the night. I implore you to listen to the ensemble’s album Pick a Dream; it’s a thoughtful representation of South African hip-hop in the 2010s.
Plus, the album cover is simply weird and wonderful – a lot like the covers of Banks’ albums and EPs, actually.
His latest, Lies About The War, lends its name to the tour he has just completed – Lies About The Tour. The album was released in August last year and affords the 31-year-old the chance to experiment.
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Its content is a departure from the sound of his debut offering (Village, in 2018) and EPs (The Boy Who Cried Freedom, 2017 and For My Friends, 2021), which are both a commentary on the social condition of the world through the eyes of a young black man.
Lies About The War is about Jacob Banks – the man, the writer, the creator, the “conduit of music”, as he prefers to describe his role in the process of creating his soulful songs.
The man likes it best when he is separate from his music, except in studio and on stage.
On the latter, he incites mania among listeners, as I witnessed at 1 Fox Street in downtown Johannesburg recently.
His voice seemed to reach for the tune, the words and their meaning from a place beyond the stage.
He channelled them into the space so spiritual that a man who had been dragged to the show by his sister nudged me at the beginning of Banks’ set and asked: “Is he a gospel singer?”
No, Banks simply sings from the same spiritual place as his greatest musical influence, a “gospel singer called Marvin Sapp, who has a famous song called Never Would Have Made It”.
Last year he told online culture and lifestyle publication Hypebeast:
For a moment, I looked into the crowd and saw a young man, lost in the trance being spun by Banks on stage, in the throes of black boy joy.
It’s a term coined by black culture creator and commentator Danielle Young and popularised by the book Black Boy Joy: 17 Stories Celebrating Black Boyhood, by American writer of poetry and children’s fiction Kwame Mbalia.
Mbalia writes stories with characters that black boys and men can identify with.
Black boy joy has been variously described as “acknowledging the struggle, building esteem and claiming that space for black boys to feel happy, proud of who they are and free” and “a welcome contrast to how young black men are often portrayed in the media”.
It is the kind of content happiness black men exude in pockets of pure bliss. Black boy joy is rare (sadly) and private and precious and a moment worthy of a thousand print stills. Banks sings about black boys who cry and still become black men.
He facilitates a space for them to be both vulnerable and accountable. And as Banks closed off his set on the night, his plea for the crowd to “take care of each other” reminded me of a directive he had given in an earlier conversation.
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“What’s the one thing you’d like my readers to know?” I’d asked him.
“See a therapist,” he advised.
He swears by it.
