No algorithms, just soul

A genre-blending storyteller, Phaqa is redefining Zulu identity through culture-rich and fearless sound

- Lesego Chepape

It's a still Tuesday morning when I get through to Sphiwe Moya, better known to the world as Umzulu Phaqa.

I'm greeted not just by her voice, but by the unmistakable rural soundtrack of clucking chickens in the background.

“I’m in Thornville,” she says casually, as if this rural KwaZulu-Natal village hasn’t just become the unlikely epicentre of a sonic storm sweeping social media platforms.

The buzz? Her single Mam'gobhozi.

A few seconds into the track, you realise this isn’t just a song, it’s a statement.

A soundbite with soul.

A storytelling session camouflaged in rhythm and resonance.

“I am not someone who is result focused,” she tells me, and it lands like a manifesto. We're living in a time obsessed with virality and algorithms, but Umzulu Phaqa? She just wants the music out.

“When I put out this song it was not mixed or mastered and there were a few politics going around about the stems. I told everyone I just want the song out there and it was released.”

The moniker Umzulu Phaqa wasn’t born in a strategy meeting or cooked up in some studio in the city. It was given to her by fellow students back at university.

“When I got there, people would say, ‘You are so Zulu!’ and that is how the name was given to me.”

And true to her name, her music is unapologetically rooted in isiZulu, but delivered with a modern spin, a style that bends genres and time.

“Fusion artist” is what she calls herself. Not quite amapiano, not quite hip-hop. It’s a sonic collage of Afro-soul, Afro-pop — even house — stitched together by lived experience and cultural legacy.

Mam'gobhozi, the title of her recent single, is a term steeped in township slang — it means someone who gossips.