Mashika tracks spiritual sounds

Zethu Mashika crafts soundtracks that stir the soul, and it all began with one lucky night

- Busi Lethole

It's a Friday night in August 2009 when Zethu Mashika makes a call that changes everything.

It's his birthday month and he's about to be given an opportunity that will alter the path of his life. A spontaneous check-in with a friend turns into an invitation: “Don’t you want to make music for a film?”

This is the night that Mashika discovered film scoring. He had happened to find his friend in the middle of an emergency, struggling to make the music for a grad film he was working on.

“They came to pick me up and I scored [the film],” he says. “That’s when I caught the bug, got infected, and then, you know, the rest is history.”

Mashika, born and raised in Benoni, Gauteng, had been working as an artist and producer, a career that began in 2003 during the surge of South African hip-hop and kwaito.

“I was the artist, producer type. I got to produce some tracks on Flabba’s album. At that time the Zulu Mob and H2O were the big guys. And then I did a track with RJ Benjamin.”

During his years as a producer, he explored different genres of music, including rock and Chinese, to figure out which lane he would thrive in.

Among his experiments was film music, which didn’t make much sense to him at first.

“When I listen back, it sounds horrible.”

But something in it stuck.

“I didn’t realise it would build the life I wanted, or make me the person I wanted to be. You're not sure until you actually do it.”

After that first short film, everything changed.