Published by :Quinton Mlaza
Researcher:Quinton Mlaza
Posted : 29 June 2016
Other Sources : Sunday Times


As i took my time and respected honour to write about this remarkable Icon , my thoughts just went emotional as i express the life of the late Mabrrrr.....

 Her Music Still lives Longer & Forever..

Born Brenda Nokuzola Fassie  on the 3rd November 1964, and passed on the 9th May 2004. She was a South African anti-apartheid Afropop singer.Affectionately called MaBrrr by her fans, she was sometimes described as the "Queen of African Pop" or the "Madonna of The Townships" or simply as The Black Madonna. Her bold stage antics earned a reputation for "outrageousness".

 Brenda Fassie and Her life ....  

Brenda Fassie was born in Langa, Cape Town as the youngest of nine children. She was named after the American singerBrenda Lee.^[ Her father died when she was two, and with the help of her mother, a pianist, she started earning money by singing for tourists.In 1981, at the age of 16, she left Cape Town for Soweto, Johannesburg, to seek her fortune as a singer. Fassie first joined the vocal group Joy filling in for one of the members who was on maternity leave and later became the lead singer for a township music group called Brenda and the Big Dudes. She had a son, Bongani, in 1985 by a fellow Big Dudes musician. She married Nhlanhla Mbambo in 1989 but divorced in 1991. Around this time she became addicted to cocaine and her career suffered were she pulled through with the support of her family,friends & fans .

 

With very outspoken views and frequent visits to the poorer townships of Johannesburg, as well as songs about life in the townships, she enjoyed tremendous popularity. Known best for her songs "Weekend Special" and "Too Late for Mama", she was dubbed "The Madonna of the Townships" by Time magazine in 2001.

In 1995, she was discovered in a hotel with the body of her female lover, Poppie Sihlahla, who had died of an apparent overdose,Fassie underwent rehabilitation and got her career back on track. However, she still had drug problems and returned to drug rehabilitation clinics  about 30 times in her life were she eventually pulled through as the Brenda Mabbr we all know.

From 1996 she released several solo albums, including Now Is the Time, Memeza (1997), and Nomakanjani?. Most of her albums became multi-platinum sellers in South Africa; Memeza was the best-selling album in South Africa in 1998.

The Great Discovery 

Most of Fassie's records were issued by the EMI-owned CCP Records.

• 1989: Brenda
• 1990: Black President
• 1994: Brenda Fassie
• 1995: Mama
• 1996: Now Is the Time
• 1997: Memeza
• 1997: Paparazzi
• 2000: Thola Amadlozi
• 2001: Brenda: The Greatest Hits
• 2003: Mali
• 2003: The Remix Collection
• 2004: Gimme Some Volume

She contributed to Mandoza's album Tornado (2002), Miriam Makeba's album Sangoma (1988), and Harry Belafonte's anti-apartheid album Paradise in Gazankulu(1988). She sang on the soundtrack for Yizo, Yizo (2004).She was a big great girl for Chicco-Twala as Mr Twala was Brendas Producer9Friend & Manager)

 

Recognition

She was voted 17th in the Top 100 Great South Africans.

Her son Bongani "Bongz" Fassie performed "I'm So Sorry", a song dedicated to his mother, on the soundtrack to the 2005 Academy Award-winning movie Tsotsi.

In March 2006 a life-size bronze sculpture of Fassie by artist Angus Taylor was installed outside Bassline, a music venue in Johannesburg.

The Death

On the morning of 26 April 2004, Fassie collapsed at her home in Buccleuch, Gauteng, and was admitted into a hospital in Sunninghill. The press were told that she had suffered cardiac arrest, but later reported that she had slipped into a coma brought on by an asthma attack.The post-mortem report revealed that she had taken an overdose of cocaine on the night of her collapse, and this was the cause of her coma. She stopped breathing and suffered brain damage from lack of oxygen. Fassie was visited in the hospital by Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, and Thabo Mbeki, and her condition was front-page news in South African papers. She died aged 39 on 9 May 2004 in hospital without returning to consciousness after her life support machines were turned off. 

More on Breanda ( Ma-Brrr ) Fassie

Fassie was the youngest of nine children, born into a desperately poor family in the Cape Town township of Langa. Her father died when she was two, and her mother, a cleaner, recognised her daughter's talent early on.

By the age of four, Brenda, named after the US country singer Brenda Lee, was performing at church events, accompanied by her mother on the piano. At the age of 16, she left for Soweto to seek her fortune as a singer, first with the local vocal trio Joy, and later fronting the township pop group Brenda And The Big Dudes.

In 1983, she released her debut recording, Weekend Special, a lament about a boyfriend who would see her only at weekends. It was an instant hit, eventually taking the group to the US, Brazil, Europe and Australia, and was rapidly followed by several more hits, including It's Nice To Be With People and No No No, Senor.

Revelling in her new-found fame, Fassie lavished money on cars, houses and extravagant parties. She had a son, Bongani, by a fellow Big Dudes musician; a 1989 marriage to a businessman was annulled a year later.

This disappointment appeared to derail Fassie. She became addicted to hard drugs and her career suffered. She fired managers, was sued by promoters for failing to turn up at concerts, and, in 1992, was fined for assaulting a photo-journalist. She got into financial difficulties and lost her house. Bongani was expelled from school because his mother did not pay the fees.

In 1994, the year of South Africa's first democratic elections, Fassie unsuccessfully attempted a comeback with Abantu Bayakhuluma (The People Speak), after which she sank into cocaine addiction, renting a room in a sleazy Johannesburg hotel with her female lover, Poppy Sihlahla. Only after Sihlahla died of an overdose did Fassie pull herself together and go into rehab.

Shortly afterwards, she released Memeza, with its hit single Vulindlela. It became South Africa's biggest-selling album in 1998, and was followed by an album a year for the next four years. The money rolled in again, and Fassie resumed her lavish lifestyle.

A talented musician, her genius lay in her ability to reinvent herself, and give voice to the frustrations and aspirations of the township. She started off as a pop queen but, politicised by growing up in Langa at a time of tremendous upheaval - the 1976 student uprisings had deeply affected her school - she easily tapped into the political militancy of the 1980s.

In 1990, she released the single Black President, a tribute to the still imprisoned Nelson Mandela, which was banned by the apartheid regime. She stopped singing in English, declaring: "I am proud to be an African." All her subsequent songs were in Zulu, Xhosa and Sotho. When kwaito, the first authentically African sound in decades, emerged from Soweto street parties in the early 1990s, Fassie adopted the genre as her own.

She also inspired by example. When she confessed to drug and drink addiction, other prominent musicians went public about theirs. When she took her first lesbian lover, other black celebrities came out of the closet. She is survived by her son.

· Brenda Fassie, pop singer, born November 3 1964; died May 9 2004.

Her sculpture lives on and can be  viewed everyday in the heart of the Jhb Cbd 

( Bassline in newtown)