Violinist Neo Motsatse: Surpassing all musical barriers

At just 22 years old, Neo Motsatse has surpassed all musical barriers driven by her will to fight and push open the doors, to work ahead in being South Africa’s most recognised black female violinist.

Describing the violin as her best friend, Motsatse started playing at the age of six.

“My dad would take the family to a lot of orchestral concerts and those were the moments I was introduced to the violin and when I saw it for the first time, I just fell in love with it,” she says.

“Music started as a hobby because I did not like to do sports and my parents knew that, and they suggested I pick up a musical instrument and I remembered the violin from the concerts.”

WATCH: Violin craftsman creates life’s emotive soundtrack one string at a time

A few years down the line, Motsatse says she realised she liked it and learned pieces “really fast” but she also had stage fright.

“Practising and attending lessons was very different from going on stage and whenever I did, it was the scariest thing for me,” she says.

“It came to the point where I felt like this would be a problem because I cannot be a musician with stage fright and to help, my parents decided to hold home concerts. Every Sunday we would invite friends and family, and I would have to play for them. I was nine at the time and that went on for a whole year.”

Motsatse said the home concerts made a huge difference and the confidence gained pushed her to embark on bigger stage performances which led to the introduction of “Neo Motsatse the Concert (NMtC)”.

“It was a whole different scene – a real venue, with a real stage and more instruments. I had my first big concert when I was 10 at the Country Club in Johannesburg with an audience of about 160 people there. I played with a quartet, pianist and joined along by a choir of my friends,” she says.

“It was then I saw music was something I liked doing. I could not see myself doing anything else.” Motsatse says she experienced a lot of struggles when her career as a violinist at a young age began.

“I went to a normal school and got a lot of negative comments not only from peers and friends, but also my teachers. They complained about missing school sometimes because I had recitals to attend,” she says.

“My grades were fine. My parents would ensure my homework was done but it was hard to juggle both activities because I took music so seriously and I used to miss some days at school and I was judged a lot on that.

“It then all clashed and it was not conducive anymore. I could not make it work together. So at 13, we decided I would be homeschooled so we could balance both in a manner that was more freeing to me.”

READ MORE: Philadlozi Mfekayi’s gift of healing through music

While growing more into adulthood and her career, Motsatse says there was a time she struggled to fully identify herself.

She created a platform for social cohesion in communities which focused on the empowerment of girls.

“When the Covid pandemic hit, I was already struggling to establish who I was as a person. I was not able to define myself as anything more than a musician,” she says.

“When I went through all of that, it was hard. I did not have a lot of friends as a kid since I was home-schooled so I struggled to open up. I felt like there was something wrong with me.

“Through the ‘girls empowerment programme’, with around 160 girls involved, this helped in meeting other girls. It was us trying to find solutions to help each other through different problems we all had.”

Motsatse has been involved in ground-breaking musical projects.

The annual NMtC has been going on for the past nine years along with city tours and international tours.

Some of Motsatse’s biggest performances included a tribute song to the late Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Dorothy Masuka’s Songbook, and a performance at the funeral of the late opera singer Sibongile Khumalo.

With her upcoming show on 3 September at the Lyric Theatre in Johannesburg, paying tribute to South African composer and musician, Masuka and well-known Italian composer, Antonio Vivaldi, in a production sponsored by the South African Music Performing Rights Association (Sampra), Motsatse says she was excited and honoured to pay tribute to two of the most prolific and truly iconic composers of their times.

“I am grateful for this opportunity and the sponsor of Sampra, for affording me with this opportunity. I hope this helps others to see there are such organisations which provide the help,” she says.

As a young black female violinist in an overpopulated industry, Motsatse describes her journey and life as quite blessed.

“I have not been an adult for that long and things were not easy but the journey I have had was probably a lot easier compared to other young black female artists, especially with the violin and the way I choose to go about it,” she says.

“I have had my parents’ support behind me the entire time and I have learned a lot in navigating through the music industry and the business side of it.

“This also helped in doing things differently from other violinists. Violin is known to be associated with classical music but when I started my concerts, I wanted to make people feel something more.

“My concerts had African and pop pieces which were not common. I focus more on reaching out to a larger range of people and sometimes classical music does not reach those people.”