While South African singer-songwriter Desire Marea’s debut solo project traversed electronic soundscapes while tackling themes of modern love and loss, his 2023 project On the Romance of Being sees the FAKA alum emerge from a transformative journey and embrace healing, comumunity and culture. Recorded live in studio with an ensemble of thirteen musicians, the album’s eight tracks lend spiritual, atmospheric jazz with ancient moods of the Nguni and Ndau people—largely inspired by Marea’s personal journey of training as a sangoma, a traditional Nguni spiritual healer. “Being a sangoma changed my whole musical practice,” Desire Marea tells Apple Music. “When you are harvesting medicine, you are harvesting the essence nature, of the elements and even inanimate things. Everything has a particular essence that does something when it comes into context with a living spiritual entity. And I think it kind of made me a lot more cognisant of the essence of music, and caring for it and creating it in a way that retains that essence, because that has the potential to heal people, through music.” The album is at varying turns reflective, mournful, celebratory, amourous, and restorative. “In African culture, there's a song for everything,” Marea explains. There's a song for a child being born, a song for weddings, a song for dying. And I think romance is about decorating things that are quite basic, but they mean a lot to you, and you romanticise them. This is the romanticization of my being, because a lot of the songs are just about me being in love, me being frustrated by love, me having out-of-body experiences, memories—basic everyday things, just romanticised.” Here, Desire talks us through the album, track by track. “Ezulwini” “‘Ezulwini' means ‘heaven’. You know when you really love someone and you're so attracted to them, you get physically aroused when they're around—they arouse something deep in your soul. Sometimes it's not necessarily something that needs to be expressed sexually, but I think here, I was just saying, ‘If I were to be your lover and make love to you, I'd want to see you levitate. I'd want it to be something that affirms your highest self. I'd like it to be joyous and buoyant.’ As a man who dates men and who loves men, there's just so much restraint, I think, emotionally, as well. And you always have to just be like, ‘Oh, my god. Come up. Why are you down there?’” “Be Free” “I think it speaks to ego death. Sometimes people hold onto their pain because, as much as it's difficult and inconvenient, it's a kind of inconvenience they've learned how to navigate. And I think maybe people are afraid of love, and they're afraid of what it may demand of them. They don't know how to love or be loved. And so they get stuck in their ways, and it's quite frustrating, especially maybe if you see potential to achieve cute things.It’s an issue with how we love as men. The experience of loving men, [and dealing with] masculinity and its restraints and the agreements, it's a lot. It's a commentary on love existing in very volatile environments.” “Makhukhu” “‘Makhukhu’ is named after a good friend, who's also a lover of mine. And I spent some time with him this one time, and I was just so inspired by his energy. I'd experienced Makhukhu, and then I met somebody else—the polar opposite—and I was like, 'Oh, my god. Ugh. Oh, my god’—just bad sex. So it's a song about disappointment. I empathise with this, because there are a lot of expectations when we have sex. Also, as men, there's certain expectations of black masculinity that have been perpetuated in pornography. It becomes this performative thing that I think alienates us from intimacy.” “Mfula” “I was reflecting about times when I had a very destructive relationship with sex that was linked to me avoiding deep-seated emotional issues. Sex was the only way I could access some kind of feeling. I think I was really disassociated in those periods. The other half just speaks from different points of view. There's the seducer in the first half of the song, and then there's the seduced, who's on his way home. And he's quite remorseful, but he's also stuck in this pattern because he's like, 'I can't resist, because the sex is amazing and the intimacy is great. I can't resist whatever you call me into. Even if you're calling me into your misery. I love it.' It’s very toxic.” “Arrival” “I love the movie Arrival— it took me out of what language can be, because it was nonverbal. They were reading those shapes; they were reading the details, the nuances, the curves. It's a language that is alien. But they did their best to learn. The song ‘Arrival’ is about learning the language of love, or learning each other's love languages. Like, 'Our love languages aren't really jelling but I'm trying, I will continue because you have my love’.” “Rah” (feat. Zoë Madiga) The song essentially is about is expressing and lamenting what it means for the earth to ail, what it means for the earth to die, and what it means to function the way we do as humanity in a way that is disharmonious with the planet. And maybe what that says about the way that we treat ourselves and how we treat each other. We are lamenting the planet, but from a perspective that is very rooted in ubuntu. And ubuntu is not just limited to being [people]; that kind of respect and symbiosis is something that is extended into nature—as you respect nature, you respect the world. And as a healer, it is something that I've learned to respect and I have been taught as well. We harvest medicine in a specific way in order to respect and preserve the earth. We care for the portals, the rivers, the mountains, the oceans in a specific kind of way. We are because of those things, we are because of the planet.” “Skhathi” I wrote ‘Skhathi’ for my mother. I lost her when I was six years old, and it changed my life, as losing a parent does. I sing about how the memory of her love is something that always comforts me. But it's not just her love. I think the laughter is the metaphor in this case. It's just her memory of the things that she used to do and the things that I still remember and her lesson. Those things stand and it's just the time and they're still here, like revolving it almost like 25 years later. And yeah, that's for my mother, Lindiwe Duma.” “Banzi” “I received ‘Banzi’ when I was by the ocean. It's about the restorative power of the ocean, the expansive nature of it, and how it's a portal into other dimensions. The ocean was also acting as a portal in order to communicate with my ancestors. And in the writing, I arrived and the ancestors said, 'Now on my shoulder.' I surrendered and I allow my ancestors to sing through me for the majority of that song. I don't know what it says. I just know that it's expensive and big and beautiful. Even if you don't know, you just have to trust. And that's an act of love. But I'm not even trying to understand it. I think what's important for me is to always be a vessel and to always channel light.”