There is much that can be said about the aesthetic effect of songs in a known language as opposed to those in a language where no sounds have any linguistic meaning. In the latter case, the listener is left to judge the music as music only and the emotions of the song from the manner of the singer and the inflections of the voice. All this is very much the case when experiencing the South African singer Simphiwe Dana, winner of seven South African Music Awards.

Her stately manner – topped at the O2 by an extraordinary flat-topped hat reminiscent of that worn by a Greek Orthodox priest, which emphasised both the otherness of her culture and her physical presence – was matched by the incantatory sound of her voice. While the band laid down rhythmic and melodic patterns straight from contemporary jazz, Dana sang long, arching phrases and melodic lines that seemed to be coming from the emotional heart of her native country. And for the audience these elongated sounds were all pure wonderful music without meaning. If she was singing about the pain in her shoes or the pain in her heart it was all one to us and consequently all the more intense.

There were times when, with her tall body angled forward and her hands turned palm outwards to the audience, there was the sense of pain. But the sound of her voice, which has the power to fall through one’s head and explode in the solar plexus (the final judge of so much artistic expression), was filled with power and fragility. She seemed to be singing simultaneously about the beauty of life and the terrors of death. An understanding of the words may have broken this spell, or it may, as with Nina Simone, have intensified the experience. It does not alter the veracity of the experience.

Behind Dana the band played with effortless groove. Both the pianist and saxophonist produced solos that would have drawn applause from the best jazz clubs, and the set ended with a spell-binding duet between Dana and acoustic bass that summed up the mix of delicacy and fire that characterises this magnificent young singer.