Morena Leraba

Introducing Morena Leraba (Lesotho) 

Over the past eight years, Morena Leraba has become a globally acclaimed flagbearer of a remodelled Lesotho sound, manifested through a series of live performances, numerous high-wattage collaborations and, due out in 2022, a debut EP recorded in Johannesburg. 

Titled “Fela sa Ha Mojela” (song or poem of Ha Mojela) the much anticipated recording captures Morena Leraba’s ability to fuse traditional Famo-inspired vocals with electronic music, dub and echoes of hip hop, all part of creating an evolving sound that is psychedelic, entrancing and future-facing. 

Like earlier singles, including “Mpuli”, and “Impepho”, Fela sa Ha Mojela solidifies the dynamism in the sound created (since 2014) by the shepherd Famo musician from Lesotho, born Teboho Mochaoa. To the listener, the recorded music and Morena Leraba’s live shows present a transporting and elevating experience that uses the vocal template of Famo to anchor electronic music that draws as instinctively on the warm, low notes of the marimba as dub’s stretched out rhythms – and much more. 

A sub-genre of Sesotho traditional music or poetry, Famo is famous in Morena Leraba’s home district of Mafeteng (south of Lesotho capital’s Maseru). “I understand Famo,” says Morena Leraba. “However, because we also have influences from elsewhere musically, I’ve always re-imagined Famo. I’ve always re-imagined Sesotho traditional music. So, coming to Johannesburg and meeting all the musicians that contributed to our journey so far, was the manifestation, perhaps, of that re-imagination.” 

The musicians who’ve helped Morena Leraba create Fela sa Ha Mojela and take his sound to the world are Steve Hogg (alias Vox Portent; founding member of Seru), Johannesburg-based electronic music producer, Thamsanqa Ngwenya, Johannesburg-based musician on marimba, Bronwen Clacherty on percussions and Molefi Makananise (founding member of BLK JKS) on bass. 

Together they offer up a celebration of the shepherds charisma through stories that touch on the village but that also reflect Morena Leraba’s more recent experiences – both (and especially) his time in Johannesburg, and his travels abroad. The stories told on Fela sa Ha Mojela are nourished by accounts of other Basotho migrant workers that Morena Leraba normally commutes with. “These are stories of migration. Labour in the informal sector. Johannesburg and its hardships. Hope. Finding strength and courage. Spiritual calling. Death and having to live with the memory of loved ones.” 

In recent months, Morena Leraba has played a slate of live dates including a successful 2021 European tour which took in Dijon, Paris, and Berlin, among other cities, and a number of shows during the 2022 Investec Cape Town Art Fair and another five in Cape Town and Stellenbosch in March this year. Up next is a series of European shows, starting with Fusion Festival 2022 in Germany.

These live shows add to a host of acclaimed performances over the years, including at the Commonwealth Games Festival (Australia), Endless Daze in Cape Town, Festival Rituel and Trans Musicales in Rennes, France, Bushfire Festival in e’Swatini (formerly Swaziland), Sentebale AUDI Concert in London, Oslo World Festival in Norway and AFROPUNK in Johannesburg. 

Since surfacing, Morena Leraba has also been an in-demand collaborator with a recent highlight being Major Lazer’s 2021 album Music is the Weapon (Reloaded) where he was featured on the fired-up, club-ready track “Hands Up” alongside Moonchild Sanelly. London-based collective ONIPA sought out Morena Leraba for the track “Free Up” - featuring Syntax and Spoek Mathambo - off the 2020 album We No Be Machine and his voice also provides the spiritual roots for “Johannesburg”, which was the first single off Damon Albarn’s Africa Express 2019 record, EGOLI – a song that features Sibot, Radio 123, and Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals). A standout collaboration has been with South Africa’s BLK JKS on their late 2019 single “Harare” where, in a display of his musical gifts, Leraba contributed both vocals and lyrics to the track. The lyrics came naturally,” says Leraba of the song. “The whole migration thing, people tell you what they go through working in South Africa without proper documentation. It is a big topic in the famo scene.” 

Much of the mystique surrounding Leraba stems from his roots in Lesotho, a mountainous country that is enclosed within South Africa. Like most of his countrymen, he spent much of his youth as a shepherd (in the village of Matholeng, Mafeteng), taking inspiration from the solitude that tending animals brings. For Leraba, retaining deeply-sunk roots in Lesotho is more than sentimentality: it’s the stuff of his creative life. “These are memories of old and here lies our strange truths - stories from 

our grandmothers, of underworld waters, villages and other-worldly beings - and you have seen this before (arcane ways of our people). Our futurism - old riddles have become new.” 

Alongside BLK JKS (who have also featured him as a guest during live performances over the past few years), Spoek Mathambo has also championed Leraba’s talent and, in 2017, he played Banlieues Bleues Jazz Festival - Paris as Mathambo’s guest artist. Since then Morena Leraba has proved to be in possession of one of the most exciting and expansive artistic visions of recent years, driven, says the remarkable artist, by the need to reflect in music nothing less than “… our other-worldly journeys—our spiritual transcendence”.

Appearances: 

1. Banlieues Bleues Jazz Festival - Seine-Saint-Denis (34 Edition) | Paris, France - 2017 2. Afropunk Joburg Festival 2017 | Johannesburg, South Africa - 2017 3. South African Human Rights Festival 2018 | Johannesburg, South Africa - 2018 4. Festival 2018 (Commonwealth Games) | Queensland, Australia - 2018 5. Oppikopie Festival 2018 | Limpopo, Northern South Africa - 2018 

6. Fakugesi Festival 2018 | Johannesburg, South Africa - 2018 

7. Endless Daze Festival 2018 | Cape Town, South Africa - 2018 

8. Festival Rituel 2 | Rennes, France - 2018 

9. Les Recontres Trans Musicales (40 Edition) 2018 | Rennes, France - 2018 10. Eurosonic Noorderslag Festival 2019 | Groningen, Netherlands - 2019 11. Design Indaba 2019: Nightscape - The Creative Village | Cape Town, South Africa - 2019 12. Cape Town Electronic Music Festival (CTEMF) 2019 | Cape Town, South Africa - 2019 13. Waltham Forest Borough of London 2019: The Africa Express | London, UK - 2019 14. MTN Bushfire Festival 2019 | Mbabane, eSwatini (Formerly Swaziland) - 2019 15. Sentebale Audi Concert 2019 (Hampton Court Palace) | London, UK - 2019 16. Oslo World Festival 2019 | Oslo, Norway - 2019 

17. Afropunk Joburg Festival 2019 | Johannesburg, South Africa - 2019 18. Nyege-Nyege Festival 2020 | Jinja, Uganda - 2020 

19. On The Grind Festival 2021 | Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - 2021 

20. Sauti Za Busara Festival 2021 | Zanzibar, Tanzania - 2021 

21. TRIBU Festival 2021 | Dijon, France - 2021 

22. Bizarre Music Festival 2021 | Berlin, Germany - 2021 

23. Badehaus (Shades of OSHU) | Berlin, Germany - 2021

24. La Maroquinaire (Stranded Horse Release) | Paris, France - 2021 

25. Sakifo Festival 2022 (and IOMMA) | Saint Pierre, Reunion Island - 2022 26. Fusion Festival 2022 | Mecklenburg, Germany - 2022 

27. UTOPIA Festival 2022 | Schloss Schönow (near Berlin), Germany - 2022 28. Les Garden Parties de Lausanne 2022 | Lausanne, Switzerland - 2022 

29. Polyfon Festival 2022 | Basel, Switzerland - 2022 

30. Jazz Montez 2022 | Frankfurt, Germany - 2022 

MORENA LERABA | Contact Information : Phone : +27 (81) 882-6723 (South Africa) | +49 160 9194 6479 (Germany) | E-Mail: [email protected] 

Social Media : FB: @morenaleraba | Twitter: @morenaleraba | Instagram: @morenaleraba | YouTube: @morenaleraba