Lady Zamar’s third studio album, Rainbow released to audiences across Africa in April 2024 – marking the beginning of a new chapter for the famed singer.
The singer, whose real name is Yamikani Banda, is one of South Africa’s most decorated modern singers with an impressive resume filled with hit singles, chart-topping albums and the biggest accolades in South African music.
And yet, even as a household name in local music, the creation and release of Rainbow felt like the re-emergence of a completely different person.
In our sit-down cover interview, Lady Zamar speaks candidly about the process of bringing Rainbow to life and how this proved to be a cathartic journey that saw her return as a bolder, fresher and different artist to the singer we’ve come to know for years.
She also touches on undergoing vocal surgery and shifting her writing style to allow room for new styles and sounds on her first release since 2019’s Monarch.
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Growth, pain, love and letting go – The process of Rainbow, with Lady Zamar
I begin our interview with a question I always start every interview – How does it feel to be Lady Zamar on this day?
“It feels crazy” she begins, before expanding. “I think the biggest thing is, it’s crazy how being a person who makes music, there’s so much disconnect from the person that makes the music. I think that’s where the crazy part is, just realising that for fans music is just there, but there’s a whole completely different person who exists behind the music who has a life the public has not been exposed to. It’s crazy, but I feel good, it feels like I’m starting afresh.”
Lady Zamar describes this chapter in her career as her most defining yet, having undergone physical and mental transformation in the process of creating Rainbow. She attributes this feeling of renewed freshness to her process.
“Yeah, I feel like I’m starting from the ground up as a musician, Maybe, not as a brand, my brand has been established for some time, but as a musician, it feels like I have to reintroduce myself again, I have to reestablish myself. When I think about it, it feels like…whoa!”
It’s never easy when you try to re-introduce yourself to an existing market as a musician but for Lady Zamar, this latest chapter was one of evolution and her fans (both existing and new) appear to be on board. Rainbow is the first time we hear Lady Zamar performing amapiano as a solo artist – there are also broader sonic influences on this record. Her writing style has changed too, and that’s before we get into the vocals (more on that in a moment). She explains how her fans have willingly received the newest version of her,
“I think my fans are quite receptive. However, I do realisethere’s a need to rebuild a fan base, because a lot of people have obviously migrated to other artists that they follow (over the years), and so it’s like that, we are starting from scratch again, like rebuilding an entire fan base.
Now I’m reintroducing people to a new sound and also greeting new fans, because I mean, how many years has it been since my last record? Four, five years. Some people were in Matric when Monarch came out and now they probably finished their degrees already! There’s a very big shift in how my fans then and now are, and how they view me, and hence the reintroduction and this re-emergence of who I am in a new way. I have a brand newslate, I can start afresh.”
She hints that despite the ways that audiences on social media have tried to have negativity follow her every step, she has found renewed energy with this new persona.
“Honestly, whatever things people have held on to in the past are really that, the past. You know? Because of the duration of the break from putting out music, I have an opportunity to be reborn and be remade in people’s eyes, and that’s exactly what I believe Rainbow is doing. And I’m doing it one step at a time.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard an artist describe the process of making an album as therapeutic. While speaking to Lady Zamar, it’s clearer than ever that she’s found new maturity both in her sound and in her character throughout the making of Rainbow,
“I do feel a lot more mature, both on the creative side and the business side of things. Now that I’m experienced in this industry, I don’t see things with the same excitement as a fresh artist and I want to make music that will resonate for generations to come.
Not only does she feel like her career is ageing well – she explains that she is now intent on making music that ages well with the listener. She adds,
“I believe good albums take a long time to really mature. But these days, the reality is people consume music very fast – especially if it’s not quality. However, when you have something that is of quality, it takes people a very long time to kind of digest it, and it’s a beautiful thing to witness and see. I think I wanted to not just get stuck in the hype of what is coming and going and instead create something that could mature slowly over time with listeners.”
One thing that listeners will notice is an even broader range in Lady Zamar’s vocal performance. This is partly the result of increased training, but also the result of numerous surgeries. She explains that she went under the knife several times before getting to work on Rainbow.
“I think my vocal range has changed a lot. On this album I’ve tried to create a really great balance with my voice. I’ve played around with some lush and beautiful tones, it goes from husky to angelic, I really feel proud of the versatility I showed with my vocals.
I had to undergo several voice operations in the past few years which added a lot to the challenge of making this album, but it’s resulted in my voice being so much better, so much brighter so I hope people notice.”
Speaking of the process that led to the album – Lady Zamar says that the journey to Rainbow wasn’t as straight forward as one might think! I ask her to take us through the making of her latest body of work,
“One of the biggest things about creating this project was that it did not end up the way it started. We didn’t initially want it to sound this way. I didn’t start it with that name, it had a whole different name, it had a whole different musical atmosphere than we had planned. We had tried to create it twice before and came back to scrap everything and start again. When we landed on Castles that’s when we knew we had found a sound we could run with.”
With a sound established, she was then able to really drive home the concept of the album. Considering all that she had been through in the lead up to this project, she felt that Rainbow – a symbol of hope and fresh beginnings – was the perfect concept.
“We decided to name it Rainbow because it felt like a new beginning. It actually felt like I wasn’t continuing from the past, I was starting afresh, you know? It felt like I was not trying to be something I used to be, but rather becoming something new, you know, and that’s where the whole idea, the songs and their meanings came from.”
One bit of feedback she admittedly opens up about taking on is simplifying the writing on Rainbow. She explains,
“Everyone asked me like, please don’t be so complicated in your music, don’t be so abstract! So I decided to shift my approach because I’ve always been very abstract and conceptual in my writing. So we simplified the writing, we simplified the songs, we simplified the lyrical content to make it easier for fans to digest.
“On Our Love I share how I experienced that self love is truly the highest form of love and how it should be something we all strive for. In Party in Heaven I sing about how I felt fear at a stage when I thought my life might end. Castles is me experiencing Love from a more youthful place once again.”
Before we end the conversation, Lady Zamar explains that the album may be out for streaming, but the story will continue to be told during the rest of the year. She teased what fans can expect when she said,
“The story is going to continue to unfold in an organic and beautiful way as the year progresses. I didn’t want to rush everything and instead wanted to give the story the chance to properly unfold, so there are some experiences coming soon that you can definitely look out for!”
With the elections having just concluded, I end our conversation by asking about the different ways that she wants to see leadership supporting creatives and artists in the future:
“I don’t think there’s enough, enough protection given for the publishing of intellectual property. There’s just not enough. If I was to speak to a governing body that’s what I’d prioritise so that someone can’t just take your work and pass it as their own without acknowledging you. As well as that, we’d like to see more investment in certification for our producers so they can be internationally recognised by bodies like the Recording Academy.”
