From writing through fear by the sea in Spain to standing before a symphonic orchestra back home, Amahle and Siphosethu Koom are learning that becoming SAI HLE is not only about how far the music can travel. It is also about becoming the women they once only imagined.
This is more than a release interview. SAI HLE’s story shows what artist development looks like before success becomes neat enough for a biography: working abroad to finance the dream, learning how sisterhood survives business, allowing genre to remain fluid and discovering that growth can mean becoming more capable of inhabiting your own life.
Special Feature | Viranova
Your siblings are your community. They are your country.
There was bad news coming from home. Money was tight. Work was uncertain. Outside, the weather had turned miserable.
And somewhere near the sea in Spain, Amahle and Siphosethu Koom still had songs to write.
The South African sisters had travelled there as working musicians, moving around an island to perform while trying to build enough financial muscle to return home and finally treat their own music as the job, rather than the thing squeezed around everything else.
It had not gone according to plan.
The sisters tell Viranova that money they had expected through the agency they were working with had not arrived as anticipated. They were hungry. Their family was calling with difficult news. Then came another call: severe weather was approaching their area.
Their house was frighteningly close to the ocean.
“There’s the beach; this is our house,” they recall.
When they asked whether they could temporarily move somewhere safer, they say the answer was that there was no budget available to relocate them.
The fear became very simple.
What if something happened to them there?
Yet in the middle of all of it, there was still a deadline.
There was still music to finish.
So they sat down and worked.
“We called our families, we panicked, but there’s really nothing that we can do right now,” the sisters remember. “And what’s the best thing that we can do when we feel like there’s nothing that we can do? Find something to do.”
Then they correct themselves.
“Not even find something to do, but do what we have to do.”
On that day, KHULA was born.
It is hard to imagine a more fitting origin story for a song about growth.
Not growth after the crisis. Not growth once everything has become comfortable, photogenic and easy to explain. Growth while the room is still uncertain.
Growth because the room is uncertain.
The work behind the joy
SAI HLE's previous release, UBUMNND, carried an easier kind of brightness. KHULA, released on 21 August through Platoon, turns inward. The sisters still give the song movement — amapiano, dance, Afro House, soul and pop colours pass through it — but the emotional centre is different.
If UBUMNND celebrated joy, KHULA asks what has to happen before joy becomes sustainable.
“The work behind the joy for us is consistently showing up,” they tell Viranova.
Showing up, for SAI HLE, means trying again tomorrow. Building the brand. Learning the parts of the music business that once felt distant. Testing the limits of what two sisters can build together. Making music not when inspiration behaves perfectly, but daily.
“Pushing ourselves to limits and parts of our lives that we never really thought we would get to as a duo. Learning new things. Making this music thing work daily.”
But ask them about joy away from the career and the answer becomes much quieter.
Peace.
Family.
A home in which your sibling can also be your friend.
“A lot of people don’t experience peace,” they say. “A lot of people don’t experience that cohesion among family.”
For Amahle and Siphosethu, the person standing beside them onstage also happens to be the person they can return home with when the stage disappears.
A sister.
A friend.
A confidant.
A roommate.
That distinction becomes important because SAI HLE is increasingly becoming something that has to exist in two worlds simultaneously: as a relationship that was there long before the music industry, and as a business whose stakes are getting bigger.
The remarkable thing is that the sisters still struggle to separate the two.
“Your siblings are your community. They are your country.”
Ask SAI HLE how being sisters affects their harmonies and there is a short pause.
It is one of the questions everybody asks.
Perhaps the interesting answer is that they do not spend much time thinking about it.
“I literally know this person from the top of her head to the bottom of her toes,” Amahle says.
When they arrange vocals, they are not consciously thinking: we are sisters, therefore this harmony should sound like this.
They think about strengths.
When the note needs to climb, Amahle knows where she belongs.
“If there are extremely high notes that need to be executed, that’s on me.”
Siphosethu occupies a different space.
“When it comes to finding a sweet spot — a harmony that you wouldn’t necessarily find in a school textbook, but if you’re looking for a feeling, something that’s just going to gel nicely — Setu is your guy.”
Later, their creative personalities become even clearer.
Amahle describes herself as emotional, almost painterly.
She might know the canvas needs purple without knowing exactly where the purple should go.
Siphosethu is more technical.
She finds the frame.
That difference could easily become friction. Instead, the sisters describe a creative relationship in which disagreement is allowed to remain disagreement.
It does not have to contaminate everything around it.
“You know what? I don’t get what you were saying then, but let’s go eat,” Siphosethu jokes.
The understanding can arrive later.
That ability to separate conflict from relationship appears to come from something much older than SAI HLE.
“I think there’s a very big barrel of grace,” she says.
It is a grace they trace back to their parents and the idea that siblings should learn friendship with each other before they search for community everywhere else.
Then comes a sentence that might explain SAI HLE better than any genre description could.
“Your siblings are your community. They are your country.”
The music almost feels secondary for a moment.
SAI HLE works because Amahle and Siphosethu know how to sing together.
But perhaps it lasts because they know how to return to being sisters when the singing stops.
A little bit of this, a little bit of that
Trying to force SAI HLE into a neat genre box is unlikely to get easier.
They do not appear interested in making it easier either.
“The SAI HLE sound generally has to be a melting pot,” they say. “It’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that.”
KHULA makes the philosophy audible.
There is amapiano infrastructure beneath it, but there are other instincts moving around inside the record. Dance music meets soulfulness. Afro House textures meet pop accessibility. Harmonies make something rhythmic feel intimate.
The sisters are comfortable with that instability.
“We love adding colour because we are colourful people. We come from colourful backgrounds. We are South African, and South Africans are very colourful as well.”
For them, genre is useful until it starts becoming a border.
The real requirement is less complicated.
“We just want everything to sound really good.”
That might sound almost unserious until one listens to how seriously they think about sound.
They speak about amapiano in terms of its rhythmic foundations, its log drums, percussion and tempo, but also about the freedom that exists once those foundations are in place.
It helps explain why imagining SAI HLE on an EDM record does not particularly disturb them.
Their roots are in dance music.
The destination is less fixed.
They want serious ideas to move.
Or, as the sisters put it:
“Yes, we must talk about serious issues, but also, let’s dance.”
The girls inside the voices
Long before KHULA, Spain, Platoon or orchestra stages, there were two girls learning what their voices could do.
Amahle and Siphosethu were born in Gqeberha and raised in Johannesburg, with Germiston forming an important part of their upbringing. Music entered early, including through church environments that became part of their foundation. Their recording history stretches back years before this current chapter of SAI HLE.
Ask Amahle where the younger version of herself still exists in her voice and she reaches back to gospel.
As a child, she wanted to sing like the lead vocalist she remembers from Ncandweni Christ Ambassadors.
There was a particular movement in the voice — a looseness, an extra vibrato — that formal vocal development would later teach her to control.
But growing older has also meant learning when to intentionally bring it back.
“There are a few songs on our EP where I bring that back on purpose,” Amahle says.
“This version of Amahle would not exist without the Ncandweni-influenced Amahle.”
For Siphosethu, the relationship with her younger musical self is less direct.
Toni Braxton fascinated her as a child. Beyoncé and Whitney Houston became vocal inspirations later. But the voice she eventually grew into does not sound, to her, like any of them.
“It’s so unique. It’s so different.”
Rather than searching backwards when she approaches a song, Siphosethu searches for what that particular song requires.
“Whatever I need to be to embody that song and put it across well, that’s what I’ll be.”
Baby Sethu, she jokes, is sleeping somewhere.
There is something revealing in the contrast.
Amahle reaches into memory for colour.
Siphosethu reaches into technique for function.
One sister remembers the unfinished painting.
The other knows how to frame it.
When the orchestra arrived
Then there is Koyika.
Earlier this year, SAI HLE joined Sun-El Musician at Red Bull Symphonic in Johannesburg, performing as his catalogue was reimagined with Maestro Chad Hendricks and a full symphonic orchestra. The 2026 edition ran across two sold-out nights at Montecasino, with SAI HLE among its featured artists.
For the sisters, hearing their voices placed inside that scale did something important.
Not because the dream began there.
Because it confirmed that the dream they already had was not ridiculous.
They had imagined orchestra-sized possibilities for their music before an orchestra was actually behind them.
Standing there felt like evidence.
“We always viewed our music as having orchestra-level potential,” they say.
The experience became what they describe as a “first of many to come.”
“It was beautiful confirmation that, okay, we’re not crazy. It’s possible.”
Then they begin talking about delusion.
They use the word affectionately.
To them, some dreams are so far removed from present circumstances that believing them can feel almost irrational. The people around you may doubt them. Eventually, you may doubt them yourself.
And then, sometimes, you arrive inside the thing you once could not prove was possible.
“Delulu is the solulu,” they laugh.
The important part of Red Bull Symphonic, then, was not that it suddenly gave them permission to dream bigger.
It made the existing dream tangible.
“If this is our beginning, imagine where our peak is going to be.”
Made for the world — eventually
There is already language around SAI HLE that points outward.
Made for the world.
It would be easy to turn that phrase into a rehearsed mission statement about global domination.
The sisters refuse.
When Viranova asks how an artist becomes global without diluting what makes them South African, they resist pretending they know something they have not lived yet.
“Honestly speaking, because we don’t necessarily have a huge global presence as yet, I think it would be very misinformed of us to answer that question.”
It is one of the most revealing answers of the conversation precisely because it is not an answer.
There is no attempt to manufacture wisdom for the quote.
“Maybe a few years from now, we’ll give you an honest, honest, honest answer,” they say.
For now, they can imagine it.
They cannot testify to it.
That distinction matters.
Ambition runs through SAI HLE, but so does an unusual willingness to admit where experience ends.
What comes after KHULA
The immediate future, however, is becoming clearer.
The sisters tell Viranova that another release is being considered for October — with Amahle currently leaning towards a love song — followed by their debut EP around January or February.
That project, if their description is anything to go by, will make genre classification even more inconvenient.
“Expect to groove. Expect enjoyment. Expect groove. Expect harmonies. Musicality. Harmonies, harmonies galore.”
They describe it like walking into a live room where bongos, marimbas and other instruments are all allowed into the conversation.
Then they try another metaphor.
Imagine DJs playing back-to-back.
House.
Deep house.
Neo-soul.
Jazz.
Not a straight line.
A “groove fest.”
The developing BONI collaboration involving Sun-El Musician and Karyendasoul also remains part of the next chapter, carrying SAI HLE further into the dance music world that already anchors them.
Again, the formula sounds simple:
The heavier the conversation, the more seriously they may need to dance.
The duo also tells Viranova that merchandise is in development, that they are considering their first intimate “come chill with SAI HLE” experience, and that KHULA will receive a music video.
What began as two sisters trying to give themselves enough financial breathing room to take music seriously is becoming an ecosystem.
Songs.
Shows.
Community.
Merchandise.
A debut project.
And, somewhere inside all of that expansion, two individual women trying to keep up with the people they are becoming.
“I’ve met that girl”
Near the end of the conversation, the word khula returns.
Grow.
This time, there is no song to hide behind.
Viranova asks each sister individually:
What are you growing into?
Siphosethu goes first.
“I’m growing into being more capable of doing things that I never thought I would be capable enough to do.”
She stops, searching for the right language.
Then she finds it.
“I’m growing into the manifested version of myself that I view with my internal eye.”
There is the person we imagine ourselves to be, she explains, and then there is the strange experience of eventually meeting that person through real life.
Through family.
Friends.
Work.
Risk.
Other people's eyes.
“I feel like I’ve met that girl.”
The woman emerging now is not exactly the Sethu everybody around her has always known. She is more willing to challenge herself regardless of scale.
“I’m just becoming a lady I can be proud of, little by little, every day.”
Amahle's answer travels in another direction.
“I’m growing into living outside of my head and into real life.”
Her head, she says, is its own universe.
For a long time, that meant experiencing much of life internally rather than inhabiting it completely as it happened.
She had imagined emotional maturity as permanent calm: a perfectly balanced nervous system, gracefully responding to everything.
Now she is less interested in performing serenity.
She wants to become whatever version of herself a real moment requires.
And if she gets it wrong?
“We’ll deal with it directly.”
There it is again.
Growth not as arrival.
Growth as participation.
The chef has already given you the food
There is one final contradiction to SAI HLE.
Amahle is a self-described “Chatty Cathy.” Given enough room, she might turn an interview around and start interviewing the journalist.
Siphosethu would sometimes prefer not to be interviewed at all.
Not because she does not understand the work.
Because she understands how intimate creativity can be.
“What’s your writing process?” may sound like an ordinary music question to somebody else.
To her, it can feel closer to:
“Why are you trying to know my guts?”
KHULA came from a frightening and deeply personal period. Now that private process becomes something she must explain to strangers because the finished song has entered public life.
Part of her wants to say:
“Just enjoy the song. Stop asking me questions!”
Then she laughs because, of course, that cannot quite be the arrangement.
She reaches for a restaurant.
You can eat excellent food and eventually become curious about the chef.
Who made this?
How?
What went into it?
Before long, in Siphosethu's increasingly absurd version of the analogy, the customer has reached:
“What was the cow's name?”
The room breaks.
Yet hidden inside the joke is a perceptive understanding of what happens once art leaves its maker.
The audience has received the meal.
But when it means something to them, they often want to meet the person who cooked it.
That might be the strange new reality SAI HLE are walking into.
More people are going to ask questions.
More people are going to want the story behind the harmony.
More people are going to arrive after hearing a song like KHULA and wonder who these women are.
And the answer is still forming.
Amahle and Siphosethu Koom are sisters who were singing before the industry was watching.
They are two very different vocal instincts that somehow know where to meet.
They are artists who wrote while frightened, worked while disappointed and danced while talking about pain.
They are women willing to call their biggest dreams delusions until reality catches up with them.
They are building something.
But, perhaps more importantly, they are becoming something.
There is still an EP to finish. Another song to choose. A music video to make. Stages they have not stood on. Countries in which nobody knows their names yet. Questions about global success they deliberately refuse to answer before they have earned the answer.
That is tomorrow.
Today, Siphosethu has met the woman she used to see only with her “internal eye.”
Amahle is learning to leave the universe in her head long enough to inhabit the one around her.
And SAI HLE are still doing what they did in that house beside the sea when the circumstances around them refused to cooperate.
They are doing what they have to do.
They are growing.
Reporting basis: Based primarily on Viranova’s original interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom, conducted around the release of “KHULA”, with the sisters speaking directly about the song’s difficult writing period in Spain, their relationship as siblings and collaborators, Red Bull Symphonic, their evolving sound, global ambitions and forthcoming plans. The transcript confirms that the sisters travelled to Spain intending to build enough financial capacity to return home and pursue music as their primary work, while the writing of “KHULA” unfolded during instability around finances, work and family. Their interview also documents the sibling dynamic, future EP plans and individual reflections on who they are becoming. Release and performance context was cross-checked against Spotify, Apple Music, Platoon, Red Bull and Music In Africa. “KHULA” is dated 21 August 2026, while Red Bull confirms SAI HLE among the featured artists at its two sold-out 2026 Symphonic nights at Montecasino.
Story index Key points, people & topics
Key points & topics
- From writing through fear by the sea in Spain to standing before a symphonic orchestra back home, Amahle and Siphosethu Koom are learning that becoming SAI HLE is not only about how far the music can travel. It is also about...
- SAI HLE wrote “KHULA” in Spain while finances were unstable, bad news was arriving from home and severe weather threatened the area around their seaside accommodation. In a Viranova special feature, Amahle and Siphosethu Koom...
- In a Viranova special feature, SAI HLE unpack KHULA, sisterhood, Red Bull Symphonic and the women Amahle and Siphosethu Koom are becoming.
Frequently asked Answers from the desk
Who are SAI HLE?
SAI HLE are South African sisters Amahle Koom and Siphosethu Koom, a vocal and songwriting duo working across amapiano, dance, Afro House, soul and pop.
What does SAI HLE mean?
SAI HLE is the name used by sisters Siphosethu and Amahle Koom for their musical duo.
What is SAI HLE’s latest single?
Their latest single is KHULA, released on 21 August 2026.
What does khula mean?
Khula means grow, matching the song’s focus on becoming, perseverance and personal development.
Where was KHULA written?
SAI HLE say KHULA was written during a difficult period while they were working as travelling musicians in Spain.
Why were SAI HLE working in Spain?
The sisters say they wanted to return to South Africa with enough financial capacity to pursue music as their primary job rather than something they did on the side.
What happened while SAI HLE were writing KHULA?
They say finances were unstable, promised agency payments had not arrived, difficult news was coming from home and severe weather threatened the area around their seaside accommodation.
How does being sisters affect SAI HLE’s harmonies?
The duo say they rarely consciously think about sisterhood while arranging music and instead work naturally around each sister’s vocal strengths.
How do Amahle and Siphosethu differ creatively?
Amahle describes herself as more emotional and painterly, while Siphosethu is described as more technical and structured.
What genres influence SAI HLE?
Their sound moves through amapiano, dance, Afro House, house, soul, pop and other influences rather than staying inside one fixed genre.
How we reported this Sources, verification & accountability
- Reporting type
- Interview
- Verification
- Direct interview
- Reporter / responsible desk
- Noko Mohoto
- Primary evidence
- Based primarily on Viranova’s original interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom, conducted around the release of “KHULA”, with the sisters speaking directly about the song’s difficult writing period in Spain, their relationship as siblings and collaborators, Red Bull Symphonic, their evolving sound, global ambitions and forthcoming plans. The transcript confirms that the sisters travelled to Spain intending to build enough financial capacity to return home and pursue music as their primary work, while the writing of “KHULA” unfolded during instability around finances, work and family. Their interview also documents the sibling dynamic, future EP plans and individual reflections on who they are becoming. Release and performance context was cross-checked against Spotify, Apple Music, Platoon, Red Bull and Music In Africa. “KHULA” is dated 21 August 2026, while Red Bull confirms SAI HLE among the featured artists at its two sold-out 2026 Symphonic nights at Montecasino.
- Additional verification
- The core of this feature is first-party reporting rather than a press-release profile. SAI HLE’s interview provides the accounts of Spain, the sisters’ creative roles, their definition of family as community, the meaning they took from Red Bull Symphonic, their reluctance to claim experience they do not yet have globally, and their tentative October release and January-February EP plans. The supplied KHULA press release independently identifies the track as a 21 August 2026 Platoon release, describes its blend of amapiano, dance, Afro House, soul and African pop, and says the duo are building towards a debut EP. Public catalogue information also confirms that SAI HLE’s recording history predates “UBUMNND”, with Music In Africa tracing releases including “Let Me” and “Impilo” to 2021.
- Image
- Siphosethu & Amahle Koom (Sai and Hle) of SAI HLE · Supplied by Phenyo Kgaffe
Edited under our Editorial Standards and How We Report process. Spotted an error? Open the correction form below, or email corrections@viranova.co.za.
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Human-written · Editor-reviewed · Corrections open
Filed by Noko Mohoto for the Music/Interviews desk · Johannesburg, South Africa. Published 31 Aug 2026.
Sources
Primary material
Viranova obtained, attended or witnessed this directly.
- SAI HLE say they travelled to Spain as working musicians so they could return to South Africa with greater financial capacity and pursue music as their primary job Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- SAI HLE say KHULA was written during a period of instability involving finances, work, relationships and difficult news from home Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- SAI HLE say expected money from the agency they were working with in Spain had not arrived while they were trying to finish music under deadline Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- SAI HLE say their seaside accommodation was affected by a severe weather warning and that the agency told them there was no budget to move them temporarily Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- SAI HLE say KHULA and several other songs were created while they continued working through the uncertainty in Spain Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- SAI HLE describe the work behind joy as consistently showing up, building the brand, learning and making music work every day Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- SAI HLE say peace, family cohesion and having a sibling who is also a friend and confidant are important sources of personal joy Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- Amahle says she naturally handles extremely high vocal passages while Siphosethu often finds unusual harmony sweet spots that create feeling Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- Siphosethu describes siblings as community and country and says creative disagreements do not spill into the sisters’ personal relationship Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- SAI HLE describe their sound as a melting pot that can incorporate different genres while retaining their South African identity Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- Amahle says aspects of her childhood gospel influence from Ncandweni Christ Ambassadors intentionally return in music on the duo’s developing EP Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- Siphosethu identifies Toni Braxton, Beyoncé and Whitney Houston among early inspirations but says her present vocal identity does not sound like those artists Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- SAI HLE say performing at Red Bull Symphonic confirmed that the orchestra-level scale they had imagined for their music was possible Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- SAI HLE declined to claim expertise on becoming globally successful without dilution because they say they do not yet have sufficient global experience to answer honestly Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- SAI HLE say another song is being considered for October and their debut EP is currently being targeted for around January or February Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- SAI HLE describe the developing EP as a groove-focused mixture of house, deep house, neo-soul, jazz, live instrumentation and extensive vocal harmonies Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- SAI HLE confirmed that merchandise is in development, an intimate SAI HLE experience is being considered and KHULA is expected to receive a music video Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- Siphosethu says she is growing into the manifested version of herself she once saw with her internal eye and becoming a woman she can be proud of Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
- Amahle says she is growing into living outside her head and in real life, learning to respond to situations as they actually happen Viranova interview with Amahle and Siphosethu Koom accessed 31 August 2026
Secondary material
Reported first by another publication or organisation, and credited here.
- Spotify lists KHULA by SAI HLE as a 5 minute 27 second single released on 21 August 2026 Spotify accessed 31 August 2026
- Apple Music lists KHULA as SAI HLE’s latest release dated 21 August 2026 Apple Music accessed 31 August 2026
- Platoon currently features KHULA by SAI HLE in its release catalogue Platoon accessed 31 August 2026
- Red Bull confirms SAI HLE as a featured artist at Red Bull Symphonic on 13 and 14 June 2026 at Montecasino across two sold-out nights Red Bull accessed 31 August 2026
- Music In Africa identifies SAI HLE as sisters Amahle and Siphosethu Koom, born in Gqeberha and raised in Johannesburg, with early musical development in school and church choirs Music In Africa accessed 31 August 2026
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