Ralf Schmitt talks about Ndlovu Youth Choir’s success ahead of Africa Rising performance

The event seeks to raise funds for the devastated live music sector, and Africa Rising event director Craig Bright says the collaborative experience will restore some hope and faith amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’ve been working on this since last year May when we were deep into the nationwide lockdown,” he told Music In Africa. “We also wanted to use this as a driver to raise funds for our industry that has been severely impacted by the pandemic.”

The event aims to showcase African stories to the world through music, while calling on the public and fans to donate to the #FeedOurCrew campaign, which has been looking after registered live events workers. Much of the proceeds will be directed towards the education sector through the Bridges for Music initiative.

Music In Africa reached out to Ralf Schmitt, the composer and conductor behind Ndlovu Youth Choir’s astounding success, for a brief chat ahead of the group’s performance.

MUSIC IN AFRICA: What is the Ndlovu Youth Choir’s musical vision?

SCHMITT: To present South African music in a way that is youthful, fresh and new, but still pay tribute to our rich vocal traditions. We often reinvent songs and include isicathamiya or other vocal traditional music in those, for example our song ‘Higher Love’. So, we kind of fill in the gaps by doing vocal improvisations and that way we put a fresh South African spin on our music. Our big thing is to inspire people and be a proudly South African group while creating this youthful sound.

What does your creative process entail and where do you draw inspiration?

Our creative process entails looking for gaps, then adding lyrics, sometimes making up words, but it’s really about finding the gap in a song that lends itself towards that. So, it’s very difficult for us to do collaborations or to find a song that we want to take on because it has to have space for the choir. And we always look at instrumentation that we could add vocals to. I do most of the arrangements, but I’ve got three colleagues, Sipho Hleza, Lungelo Masango and Sandile Majola, and they also do the translations. A lot of the times I would give them the line and they would come with the text that would fit in with the improvisation. 

How does the group prepare for big performances and how do you consistently maintain your power and magic on stage?

Rehearsals. That’s a simple answer, but I can’t stress how important rehearsals are. Being on stage at America’s Got Talent was the easy part because the hard work had already been done. We had put in many hours per week. Some weeks the guys put in 20 to 30 hours per week, going through routines they had already gone through thousands of times.

The choir recently released another original song ‘We Will Rise’. How has its reception in South Africa and the rest of the world been?

The reception for ‘We Will Rise’ has been incredible. As a choir releasing pop songs, that’s not very common. The track had more than 250 000 views on YouTube and hundreds of thousands more on various platforms as well as streams. So we’re really grateful. We’ve had other original songs, our first which was a song called ‘Believe’ taken off our first album [Africa, 2019]. And then ‘Hold On’ and ‘We Will Rise’ on the second album [Rise, 2020].

What has the group’s success meant for each member?

It’s very important that we are role models for each other and not only in our conduct. We always try to use our platform to achieve this. You’ll see on our social media that we’ve taken up many campaigns such as on coronavirus. We’ve worked with UNICEF, World Health Hearing Aid, and student debt. So using our platform for greater good is important to us and for the guys to understand that. Our biggest challenge is to ensure that our success is long-term and sustainable.

In your experience abroad, what are some of the misconceptions that the rest of the world has about African music and musicians, and what is the group doing to change them?

I think one of the misconceptions is that we can’t wait to get out of Africa and to go and sing in the world. When we travel people often say to us, ‘How are they going to adapt when they go back home to the dusty streets’, but they don’t realise that we love the dusty streets. Home is home. Although we’re economically poor, we’re rich in many other aspects. And everyone was extremely homesick towards the end of the long stay in the States and just wanted to be home. I think it’s a misconception in the world that African musicians just want to get out of Africa because they cannot earn a living in Africa, which is not really true. There’s been many international tours that we’ve declined because we could do better here. We will take opportunities as they come and as they work for us, but it’s very important that we maintain a strong a local presence. And I think people overseas need to understand and appreciate that this is important to African artists.

What important advice can you give emerging musicians right now?

Never stop believing and never stop trying. Keep working on your craft, getting better as a musician. There are so many incredible talents in this country. We’re from a small rural village called Moutse in Limpopo, and I wonder how many more villages are out there bursting with talent. There is so much talent that needs to be unearthed and developed in the country. If we can do that, our nation would be extraordinary.

Can you tell us about any special choreography that the group is planning for their upcoming performance on Robben Island?

We’ve got a cool dance that we did with ‘Jerusalema’. We released it in September last year. It’s our own unique interpretation of the ‘Jerusalema’ dance. And it’s going to be a magical event and iconic South African performance.

Watch the Africa Rising concert for free here. Additionally, ahead of the main concert, Ndlovu Youth Choir will perform live to a limited audience at the V&A Waterfront, Grand Africa Café & Beach at 12pm. Get tickets to the event here.