Rethabile Mokete, higher generally known as Khosi Mosotho Chakela, was a singer — and a Sotho, the ethnic majority in Lesotho, a former British colony and an enclave inside South Africa with a inhabitants of two.1 million. Chakela grew up in South Africa’s townships. After years of residing on the road, then engaged on constructing websites, in his 30s he recorded the album Motsamai le Chakela no 1 (Shear Document Firm, 1999). It was the beginning of a profitable profession in famo, a conventional musical style in Lesotho.

Although his songs nonetheless function on streaming platforms’ Lesotho playlists, when Chakela died of Covid in January 2021, his demise went largely unnoticed on the worldwide music scene. It was, nevertheless, broadly mentioned within the so-called Accordion Triangle — three villages in Lesotho’s Mafeteng district which have produced a number of generations of famo musicians — and among the many 180,000-plus Lesothans residing and dealing in South Africa.

Chakela was a infamous ‘musician gangster’ within the phrases of Rataibane Ramainoane, founder and editor-in-chief of Moafrika FM. a privately owned Sotho-language radio station. Chakela had been on account of seem earlier than Lesotho’s Excessive Court docket this March, as a co-defendant within the trial of former prime minister Thomas Thabane. Thabane and his second spouse, Maesaiah, had been charged with ordering a success on his estranged first spouse, Lipolelo, who had refused to divorce him, and reportedly requested a bunch of famo musicians together with Chakela to hold out the contract. The fees had been dropped in July as prosecutors may not find a key witness. Ramainoane informed me he himself had been on Chakela’s hit record from 2006 to 2011. ‘With out God’s assist, the accordion cowboy may have killed me a number of occasions.’ (He’s additionally a pastor within the Nation of God Apostolic Church.)

Famo was as soon as the music of Sotho shepherds who had gone to work within the mines close to Johannesburg. Famo singers carried out in unlawful ingesting dens within the townships, (…)

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