Abel Selaocoe walks into a bar in King’s Cross, London, with a small suitcase and a large, curvaceous silver case. “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re going to have to put that in the cloakroom,” the waitress says. “I can’t – it’s my life,” Selaocoe exclaims, and gives her a winning smile. She tries to insist, and watches, bemused, as he steers both cases into a corner. It is about his life that we are here to talk – his extraordinary journey from growing up in a township outside Johannesburg to becoming a classical cellist of international renown and a singer, composer and improviser of dazzling originality. Selaocoe (pronounced Se-lau-chay) has developed a music of his own into which he pours everything he is, his South African heritage and his ideas about life. His cello is a multitasker, often a percussion instrument. And when the cello is not supplying the percussion, Selaocoe uses his extraordinary voice instead: full of melodious yearning one moment, growling as if disinterred – an ancestral voice – the next.
I heard him play at Bold Tendencies, in Peckham, in a show called One-Man Medicine that could, given its effect on his audience, have been medicine for the masses. In a mulberry suit, dreadlocks swept up into a ponytail, he bent over his cello with intent concentration as if in conversation with it, his face reacting to every note: impish, frowning, radiant… His classical training seems like a safety net for the soul. At the end, the audience rose to their feet as one. Later this year, Selaocoe will perform at the Lucerne festival (for the classical elite) and at Womad. He is equally celebrated for his charismatic musicianship in both worlds. He has also recently been made an artist in residence at the Southbank Centre, and in September releases his debut album, Where Is Home (Hae Ke Kae).
