Maskandi singer Ithwasa Lekhansela takes on trouble and tangle with Inxakanxaka, a Zulu word for a mess or complication. The title points to a situation knotted and hard to resolve.
Inxakanxaka works in the guitar-led maskandi style, picked Zulu strings and a firm rhythm behind a vocal that leans into storytelling. The writing deals with a complicated predicament, exactly the kind of lived situation maskandi was built to narrate, and the arrangement keeps its roots character while the voice walks the listener through the trouble.
Ithwasa Lekhansela carries the maskandi tradition tied to the Khansela name, keeping the Zulu guitar sound rooted in real life. A song about a tangle of problems fits a genre that has always reported the knots of everyday existence.
The thing to catch is the burst of rapid praise-chant where the delivery speeds up, cutting through the complication with pure rhythm. That passage is maskandi at its most charged.
It suits anyone caught in a situation with no easy way out. Those rooted in the tradition will recognise the honesty in it.
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