Cofield Mundi remembers singing 'House Of The Rising Sun' as a toddler.

"It's not a very appropriate song for a three-year-old," she laughs of the ode to a brothel. "You can blame my mother for that."

Blame, perhaps, is too strong a word — it's clear that Mundi's love for music was forged from a very young age. Her aunt, Jill Kirkland, found fame as a singer in the 1960s ("She was quite famous and I grew up with someone who was so musical and we were all in these little videos she'd make.")

And her mother, the Animals fan, was a guitar teacher. "In the afternoons I used to listen to her play, so I must have learned melody at a young age. And being exposed to music like that is really how I started."

By the time she was 16, Mundi was fronting a band, The Aeroplanes.

"It was terrifying but it was so much fun," she recalls enthusiastically.

"They needed a singer. My sister was friends with them and they were quite a few years older than me, but I decided to go and give it a bash."

She makes it sound simple enough — but there were some challenges.

"We played at the Free People concert — there were about 30 000 people and I remember thinking 'this is absolutely petrifying' but I loved it."

School, as it tends to do, got in the way. Later, so did life. But even as Mundi worked in Boston, Massachusetts she made the time to front a band and compose, eventually returning to South Africa with a full songbook and dreams of a full-time music career.

The result was 2003's 'Ceremony', a debut album followed by appearances at the 46664 event in George, the Kirstenbosch Summer Sunset Concert series, and the New York Music Festival.

Professionally and personally she was living the dream. Creatively, not so much — writers block reared its head.

"I think I was in a very happy place. Everything was going well but I had to kind of chuck that in order to be able to write again — a true tormented artist, you know," she grins cheerfully, sounding nothing at all like a tormented artist.

"You need to have experiences in order to write about them, otherwise what do you write about? Hanging the washing on the line and watching the sun? So that's why I think I needed a bit of an edge."

Life, as it does, provided that edge she needed.

"Between all the upheaval of building a new house and leaving a long-term relationship I got all the material. As well as falling in and out of love a couple of times in between."

Unsurprisingly the resulting songs on her second album 'The Big Question' have a real sense of intimacy — that she's now ready to share.

"Previously I went through a period where it was very difficult for me to do something intimate out there, because I was worried how I was going to be judged. But I've gotten over that because I've realised people can relate to those songs somewhere within them."

» For more info, visit www.cofieldmundi.co.za