Brenda Fassie: The Queen of African Pop and her Music

The late Brenda Fassie, "Queen of African Pop," and dubbed by Time Magazine as "Madonna of the Townships" was a phenomenon, that is why if you listen to her powerful chords which echoes with emotional bursts, and watched her live performances and music videos, you would conclude a vacuum had been left.

I wasn't too familiar with her music until probably the beginning of the decade when I seriously began collecting African music which has now taken me to a whole new heights. I collect everything African; from soukous to rumba, and from highlife to ikwokirikwo, the kind of big band ensemble Ikenga Superstars of Africa invented, with that popular vibe, Ikenga Ga Allum, (Ikenga will marry me).

Fassie's music causes commotion whenever it's played at party jams and night clubs. Before purchasing her Greatest Hits at Amoeba Records in Hollywood, I never thought of her songs having such powerful lyrics especially the track 'Vul'Indlela' she sang to Nelson Mandela in one of her striking concerts in South Africa.

Fassie was born in 1964 in Langa, Cape Town, South Africa and died on May 10, 2004 at 39. She had a long battle with drugs stirring a whole lot of controversy in the media, and not slowing down in what she knew best, her music and those powerful chords, the critical press did not deter her in moving on to the top. Her Discography is right here and amazing even when it's posthumous.

The "Greatest Hits" CD comes with liner notes describing Fassie as "versatile, gutsy, laden with texture and instantly identifiable" possessing "one of the best voices in South Africa - heck, in Africa and beyond!" Profits from the CD benefits the 46664, a subsidiary of the Nelson Mandela Foundation "to improve the lives of those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa." 46664 was Mandela's prison number.