British actor, Idris Elba, who portrayed Mandela in the 2013 film, Long Walk to Freedom, has released an album in honour of the late South African president and activist.
Titled Idris Elba Presents: Mi Mandela, the album showcases the best of South Africa’s emerging talents, features music that are influenced by various South African musical traditions.
Reports have it that majority of the album was written while Elba, who also moonlights as a Disc Jockey, was filming Long Walk to Freedom, in Johannesburg.
The work is said to be part of what Elba hopes will be ‘character albums’ based on various roles he has played, although, as with Mi Mandela, Elba is unlikely to sing on most of the tracks.
“Mi Mandela is part of a series of albums that I’m going to make called character pieces, character albums,” Elba said in an interview with NME. “I take the character that I played and sort of explain the journey playing him, and the journey of the character, in music. What would he have listened to, what might have influenced him, what influenced me as an actor … This suddenly becomes these new songs, these new ways to write songs and express emotion attached to a character.”
Elba has recently been under much media scrutiny after it was revealed that Sony has been considering him as the next James Bond, following the hacking of Sony students.
The idea was met with mixed reactions. While Rapper Kanye West loved the idea, telling The Sun that casting Elba as James Bond would be ‘visionary’, others were more critical, with radio show host Rush Limbaugh insisting that Elba can’t be James Bond ‘because he’s black’.
Elba himself took a lighter approach to the ‘controversy’, by tweeting a picture of himself looking a little disheveled with the caption ‘isn’t 007 supposed to be handsome? Glad you think I’ve got a shot! Happy New Year people.’
In a 2011 interview, he said that while he would certainly consider the role, he did not want to be ‘the black James Bond’.
“Sean Connery wasn’t the Scottish James Bond, and Daniel Craig wasn’t the blue-eyed James Bond, so if I played him, I don’t want to be called the black James Bond,’ he stated.
