Over the years, singer, songwriter and academic, Lady Zamar has lost her voice, spent a year in and out of hospital and had complications with her kidney. With all that has happened, she recently released her album titled Rainbow, just over four years after her last release.

AN ALBUM OF HOPE

Real name Yamikani Janet Banda, Lady Zamar says the album is a manifestation of hope, love, freedom and peace. "The recurring theme in this project is hope, realness and a basic bearing of the heart, mind, and soul. It's an album that speaks to a lot of freedom of mind and free from burdens," Lady Zamar tells ZiMoja. It took her about six months to make the music and a couple of years to write the songs. "Some I wrote before Covid-19 started and some in 2022 and 2023. The songs have been a collection over a long period of time, and some were just quickly written in the studio."

MANAGED BY OPEN MIC PRODUCTIONS

She recently joined Open Mic Productions despite their controversial reputation. She says she has entrusted them with her brand. "I haven't had a management company in a long time. The previous one I had was quite disappointing. I figured that Open Mic has had a lot of success with different artists," she says. "I am signed to Universal and Open Mic has a good relationship with them, so it felt like a good and organic relationship for management."

LOSING HER VOICE

She says she did not lose her voice while recording the album but before that. "I lost it coming off the creation of the project, Monarch, and into 2020.My vocal cords were damaged due to swelling and a lot of discomfort." She needed to be operated on. "I was in a position where I had to be quiet and not speak for about a year and a half. I needed to get physiotherapy and regain my voice. Then I did three years of vocal training and learning to sing again and learn to take care of my voice." She was in and out of hospital in 2020. "I have been in doctors' rooms in 2021 and 2022 and spent the rest of the time working on getting my voice again."

She had a vocal cord operation and two other operations after that and had to get her septum fixed. I removed my tonsils to stop me from getting infections. Later on, I suffered from a kidney problem and had to be hospitalised close to a week. It has been a lot." Lady Zamar says she had to physically and emotionally heal. "I did a lot of therapy. I saw a psychiatrist, psychologist and a physiotherapist for a year and a half and have consistent exercises that I do on a daily basis."

LEARNING TO COMMUNICATE

At first, the fear of never being able to communicate dawned on her. "But as I got better, emotionally and mentally, I realised that a lot of the reasons I lost my voice was because I had made poor decisions in my life and I had allowed fear to make me choose certain actions," she says. "I also wasn't using my voice correctly because I was silent in things that mattered and vocal in things that didn't matter as much to people. I wish I had more strength to speak out about my truth. Most likely, I would not have lost my actual voice because I would not have been stressed or angry all the time." She says this all happened at the peak of her career. "So, it was very hard for me to communicate that I was breaking because people were expecting me to be this successful, happy artist all the time and I was mostly not," she adds. "It was hard. It made me realise that the physical voice was not the only one that I allowed myself to lose. So, when I got physically better, I also became emotionally and mentally better and started using my voice for more than just singing."

DEATH 

Her favourite song on her latest album is Party In Heaven and she requested that it be played at her funeral. The song is her imagining having a party in heaven when she dies and how peaceful and fun it will be. "There was a time I genuinely believed that I was going to get assassinated," she says. "I wrote the song then because I had heard stories from people who made speculations. So, Party In Heaven, was created around August last year,and it's very special to me because it made me look at my life and how I want to live the rest of it - having to decide If I want to live in fear or being joyful and taking every moment and every day as a gift, living to the fullest," she says. "I made the decision that I will always live to the fullest and I will not allow situations to dictate how I show up. Never again, allow fear to make me decide, but I am always going to move with love. It's one thing to gain your voice, but another thing to love yourself and others, to forgive and give grace."