Lloyiso, courtesy Aviwe Xaluva.

Last summer, South African singer Loyiso Gijana performed at the Miss South Africa competition and at the wedding of soccer great David Beckham’s eldest son. While both were amazing opportunities to the artist, best known simply as Lloyiso, and he was starstruck getting to meet Beckham at the star-studded event, his even more significant audience was Marula and his brethren at an elephant preserve a couple of hours from his home on the southern coast of the country.

“I feel like we had a connection,” Lloyiso says, pulling back the sleeve on his shirt to show an impressive elephant tattoo (and then to a painting of an elephant over his shoulder). He got the tattoo a year prior and added that he views the giant mammal as his spirit animal.

“In South Africa we have tribes,” he explains. “There are ancestral sides to things. In Xhosa [one of the country’s main tribes], there’s a tribe called Ndlovu. Ndlovu means elephant. That’s my clan name. That’s where I come from. That’s my ancestral history. That’s why I also feel strongly that I’m connected to this animal, and I’m connected to its energy and spiritual awareness and its attributes. When I visited the elephants, they actually liked me.

“It was so spiritual, but everything else was also great,” Lloyiso says. “The wedding was amazing. ‘Miss South Africa’ was amazing. It’s been just a really good journey.”

That journey has led Lloyiso to become the first South African artist signed to Republic Records in the U.S. But the singer-songwriter, famous in his home country for his ballads and about to introduce fans to another side of his music in the new year, got his start singing as a pre-teen, first alongside his TV to “High School Musical,” “Camp Rock” and “Dream Girls,” and to albums his sister brought home.

He decided he wanted to pursue music in his life after realizing he could hit the hard-to-reach notes and impressing his family and classmates.

Lloyiso, several brothers and sisters, as well as cousins, were raised by his mother in Port Elizabeth, a larger city, along the Indian Ocean. One time, a cousin who sang at church got sick and needed Lloyiso to step in. He was still just 11, but got the singing bug from that point on, always singing at church. By the time he was 14, he was entering singing competitions at school. He also entered “South Africa’s Got Talent,” making it past initial auditions but not much further. He walked away disappointed that his audition didn’t even make it to TV.

It was a minor hiccup for someone used to reaching his goals. In high school, where he was bigger and stronger than his peers, he excelled at rugby (his favorite sport) and tennis.

“I was really in every sphere of school growing up. I was always a group leader, always the guy that talks louder than others,” he says. “I was good at everything, and I kind of gained popularity.”

Two years later, in 2015, 16-year-old Lloyiso auditioned for “Idols,” the country’s version of the “Idol” singing competition, and finished in the top five, scoring a hit in the process with a Sam Smith cover.

“Other kids at school were kind of intimidated, and that told me a big lesson about what people will say when you start achieving things,” he says of his successes, which made him stand out at school.

“People start looking at you in a certain way. I’ve really learned to really hone what I have and try to be as unapologetic as possible.”

In 2020, Lloyiso launched his TikTok account, continuing to share his covers of songs by the likes of Billie Eilish, Adele, Rihanna and Lewis Capaldi, which racked up tens of millions of views. The next year, Republic signed him to a record deal. This year he was nominated at the All Africa Music Awards for Songwriter of the Year. He first single, “Seasons,” has been streamed more than 21 million times.

Signing with a major U.S. label is a big deal to him, not only for his own success, but for those who are sure to follow him, he says.

“It’s always been like ‘American music is higher than South African music,’” he says. “We never dream to be in that stage. … It’s like something that we can never get to, but it’s something that we all aspire to get to. It’s like a testimony that when you really work hard, and you really stay consistent in what you do, anything is possible.”

Searching for Lloyiso’s songs on Spotify reveals a plethora of strong ballads that shows his vocal range and an emotive, silky tenor. He sings primarily in English, but also in Xhosa, and he speaks some Afrikaans.

He’s recently released a couple of confessional heartstring tuggers in “What Would I Say” and “Let Me Love You Now.” But his tastes are much more varied, and fans will get a taste of them in the next few months, leading up to EP that he’ll release in 2023.

“I’ve made dance songs. I’ve made Afrobeat songs. I’ve made hip-hop songs—the songs that I’m almost rapping in, that people would not even expect to hear from me,” he says. “I’m everywhere, man. I’m so inspired by every kind of music. I can listen to Coldplay, and I can listen to Travis Scott, one song after another, and be like, ‘Oh, my God! This song is amazing’ and still feel the same type of energy. I think it’s all about energy for me, and how the music makes me feel. I don’t think it matters what it is, really.

“Ballads is what I really perfected, in a sense that I’ve really been able to do it in a way that there’s no one else that can do it the same way I do,” he continues. “I can be the best in ballads. But there’s so much more to me than just that.”

Lloyiso still calls Port Elizabeth home, even though the city is far from a music industry center. It’s peaceful for him to come home and make music among friends and family. He’s been traveling a lot lately, though. For example, he already had a songwriting trip planned to L.A. and New York when he found out from his management that he was asked to perform the first dance song at Brooklyn Beckham and actress Nicola Peltz’s wedding near Miami.

“They heard my voice, and I saw them following me on Instagram,” he explains.

He says he’s working on getting to the U.S. to perform shows as well. He wants to get a better grasp of how the music industry works here, as well as the culture. His forthcoming EP will offer a complete storyline of his last couple of years, with songs that he’s written as far back as three years ago and as recently as this year.

“It’s like a continuation of all these seasons … that have happened in my life,” he says. “Basically, it’s going to be one thing, and it’s going to be a beautiful thing.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.