Necklaces in geometric orange, yellow, turquoise and other bold colours lie stacked on the kitchen table among plates piled with beads. The room itself is a stark contrast to all the colour — the plastered walls are bare, the concrete floor is cold. The cast-iron stove is fired by coal.
The beads wobble as if keeping time as the gogos around the table start ululating, “ngijabula kakhulu”.
The Zulu phrase, which means I am happy, echoes beyond the walls of Sarah Nhlapho’s home in Moutse village in Limpopo. She is one of the five “Gutsy Gogos” who have been creating beaded pieces for the Ndlovu Youth Choir, the singing sensations who this week compete in the finals of the world’s biggest talent show, America’s Got Talent.
“I’ve never been overseas, but my work has made it overseas and that makes me very proud, ngijabula kakhulu, ngijabula kakhulu,” Nhlapho sings as the other women join in chorus, all beaming with joy.
The choir’s Zulu rendition of Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You went viral on YouTube. Accompanied by Grammy-winning South African flautist Wouter Kellerman it reached more than a million viewers in a week.
The hype around the choir went stratospheric after the America’s Got Talent producers contacted them to audition in March, when they got a standing ovation. Even Simon Cowell, who has made his name as the show’s Mr Nasty, has given them the thumbs up. The enterprising Moutse gogos now earn an income creating bead pieces for the choir.
Nhlapho explains that the skill of beadworking is passed on from mothers to daughters. The group of women, made up of Nhlapho, Maria Mahlangu, Elizabeth Makua, Betty Mahlangu and Elizabeth Mahlangu, officially got together as the Gutsy Gogos in 2003.
“As a young girl I watched my mother do this and she watched her mother do this. We get inspiration from each other because we all have a different way of doing things and we also look around on the internet to see what the latest trends are,” says Nhlapho.
It takes three days to make a beaded headband, a necklace, a bracelet and a beaded belt for each member of the choir. For the choir’s first audition, the gogos woke up at 4am and only went to bed at midnight. Then there’s the mission to buy beads, which involves a four-hour trip to Marabastad in Pretoria.
“Everyone is proud and everyone is talking about the kids, they’ve made this place known. As adults we’ve never been oversees, so to see our children make it oversees makes us very proud,” says Nhlapho.
Since they came to the attention of the world the choir has been inundated with requests for interviews. Thulisile Masanabo says she was bullied as a child for being too skinny and was so shy at first that she stood at the back of the choir.
“For most of the choristers, we come from underprivileged families, so joining the choir for us is not just about singing but a place where we come to escape our problems, where everyone is seen as one, and you can never judge anyone for their background,” she told a radio talk-show host.
Thulisile remembers her first encounter with the choir.
“I was on my way from school and they were having auditions. They would just come out and call everyone in to audition — even if you couldn’t sing, just to take a chance.”
The African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child”, rings true in Moutse, typical of the nondescript dusty villages with sand roads and modest homes that are dotted across SA’s northern regions. The only geographical feature that distinguishes this from countless other villages is the mountains in the distance.
Seamstress Linah Ncongwane is another local who has participated in the choir’s success. She created the skirts and shirts which the choir wore in the famous YouTube video that went viral.
One must negotiate several dirt roads to get to Ncongwane’s house, where The Moment, by jazz saxophonist Kenny G, is playing on the radio in her living room. On another table are material off-cuts, an Italian dressmaking book, needles and three sewing machines.
The soft-spoken dressmaker shows us the patterns she used to make the choir’s skirts and shirts. Sewing patterns can be bought but Ncongwane has used old newspapers for her patterns.
She did needlework at school and started sewing by hand to make ends meet. It wasn’t until her late husband encouraged her to enrol at the local dressmaking school that she studied the craft properly. She has been dressing the choir for about three years. Ncongwane started making curtains and bedding for the Ndlovu Care Group before she was approached to make outfits for the choir.
“I was very excited and happy to see that they were doing so well in America and that my work was getting recognition. I feel that this is good for the community. I thank God for bringing Dr Templeman here; if it were not for him our work would never get the recognition it’s getting now.”
Hugo Templeman is a familiar face in Moutse. The Dutch physician started the Ndlovu Care Group in the 1990s. The project initially started as a clinic and has since grown to include child and youth development programmes, infrastructure support and a research centre. In 2008 the Ndlovu Miracle Theatre in nearby Elandsdoorn was opened; Templeman decided a group of local singers should perform at the opening.
“Kids come in slouching. When they start to sing the first thing they have to do is stand upright. They start singing and what do you do at the end? You applaud. For the first time in their life they’re applauded, there’s a major change,” Templeman said.
It was conductor Ralf Schmitt’s idea to try something different and do a local version of Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You that changed everything. Schmitt drives the two hours from Johannesburg twice a week to rehearse with the choir.
The song’s publishers gave Schmitt the go-ahead. He came up with a few new lines which he brainstormed with 24-year-old Sandile Majola.
“I used some kasi slang to make it catchy so young people could relate to it, especially in the townships,” says Majola.
Moutse village is a time capsule of pre-1994 SA with its air of abandonment and neglect. There are still pit latrines and children push wheelbarrows with empty water buckets en route to fetch water from boreholes built by Templeman. Goats and chickens run around and cows graze on sparse clumps of grass. Some of the choir members come from single-parent homes and others are orphans and the money they earn singing feeds the family.
Though the choir officially has 48 members, only 24 were chosen to go to the US. Those left behind feel no bitterness, however, only pride.
Grade 10 pupil Mbali Tshangna sits in an empty classroom before her next maths test. The 17-year-old says singing was initially just something to keep her off the streets and busy, but now she sees it as an opportunity to pursue her dream.
If they win, everyone wins. We are all Ndlovu
— Elizabeth Mahlangu
“I feel very proud, especially because we are from Limpopo, it’s a very downtrodden community. The choir has taken us very high … we speak every day and they’ve been bragging to us about walking the streets of Hollywood.”
Fourteen-year-old Gugulethu Mahlangu has become something of a celebrity in the community now that the choir has achieved international attention. “When people saw the auditions they called me and said, ‘We love you guys, we’re your fans’. Everyone was all around me and people were calling me.”
Elizabeth Mahlangu of the Gutsy Gogos has the last word: “If they win, everyone wins. We are all Ndlovu.”
The choir will compete against nine other acts this week. The live final will air in the US on September 17 and 18, and the winning act will walk away with $1m and chance to headline a show at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas
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