Soweto Gospel Choir Brings Harmonies to Bristol

Okay, dear readers, I promised you'd hear it here first. Listening to the choir, I couldn't keep still -- the music demands that you move. Afterward, I talked to one of its singers. Stirring, powerful music, lovely people. I wish everyone could have been there. Here's what I wrote for Thursday's edition of The Bristol Press (www.bristolpress.com) about it:

BRISTOL -- The Soweto Gospel Choir served up gorgeous South African harmonies and impressive choreography to about 200 appreciative ESPN employees in the company cafeteria Wednesday.

“I thought it was absolutely outstanding, spiritually moving, uplifting and inspirational,” said Ty Frison, studio director. “It kind of took me back to my Baptist days, growing up in the church.”

The choir stopped between East Coast gigs to deliver a powerful 30-minute performance, singing in English and also in some of South Africa’s many dialects.

John A. Walsh, executive editor at ESPN, stood in the throng in the cafeteria and soaked in the music.

“Four 12 years, the company has been working on the challenge of diversity in the workplace and seeing gradual success from year to year,” said Walsh. “But never in those 12 years have we experienced such an energizing, enjoyable and entertaining presentation of the case for diversity.”

ESPN Senior Vice President Jed Drake, who introduced the choir, is coordinating the company’s effort to cover the World Cup in South Africa this summer.

Along with the games, the coverage will feature authentic South African music and highlight the diverse people and customs of the country.

Claude Mitchell, coordinating music director at ESPN, said the Soweto Gospel Choir will be featured prominently in the World Cup coverage.

“We’re incredibly fortunate to be able to get the choir here,” said Jed Drake, senior vice president and executive producer. “Every once in a while, things work out.”

Sipokazi Nxumalo, a lead singer in the choir and its narrator, said the group had seen ESPN on television and was honored and humbled to come to the campus to perform.

She said the choir members have “a family bond” and come from different parts of South Africa, though 90 percent now live in Soweto.

They tour about nine months a year, Nxumalo said, and sometimes get lonesome for South Africa and its climate.

“Sometimes, it’s so far from home,” she said. They’ve learned, though, in five years of touring in the United States, to bring “our big jackets and our warm clothes.”

Though they don’t all speak the various dialects that they sing in, she said they easily learn them through the music.

“It just flows and comes naturally,” she said.

The choir has a four-piece band, but most of the time, Nxumalo said, they use only drums for accompaniment.

“We prefer our audiences to hear the beauty of our harmonies,” she said.

Nxumalo said American audiences are their favorite because of the warm response the people give to the music.

“They’ve always treated us well,” she said.

Nxumalo and about two dozen other professional singers, two of them playing djembe drums, filled the cafeteria space with music.

The Soweto Gospel Choir has toured internationally for years, Drake said, and was featured on the Grammy-award winning Peter Gabriel song, “Down to Earth,” that is part of the soundtrack for the 2008 movie “Wall-E.”

Drake told the gathered employees that the choir would give them “what may be one of the most spectacular performances we’ve had on our campus, ever.”

No one disagreed.

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ESPN Employees Have All the Fun

As if there weren't enough great reasons to want to work for ESPN -- their office chairs are really comfortable, for one thing -- here's another:

ESPN, which is making a big push to cover the FIFA World Cup this summer with authentic South African music and other cultural treats, is bringing the Soweto Gospel Choir to sing in their ESPN Cafe at lunchtime on Wednesday, just to get the locals here fired up so they can fire up the viewers about South Africa and the World Cup. I wrote this about it for Tuesday's Press (http://www.bristolpress.com/):

Bringing their vocal harmonies northward, South Africa’s Soweto Gospel Choir is making a special stop at ESPN Wednesday.
The choir’s work will be some of the music featured during ESPN’s coverage of the FIFA World Cup this summer, said Claude Mitchell, coordinating music director for ESPN.
“They’ll have a fairly prominent role,” said Mitchell.
Mitchell said ESPN identified the Soweto Gospel Choir early on in its World Cup planning as a source “to represent the local sounds of South Africa and Africa in general.”
ESPN will incorporate “a lot of authentic African music” in its presentation of the soccer games and other programs throughout the monthlong World Cup championship, Mitchell said, including jazz, pop, urban, hip hop, reggae and rock and roll.
“I would hope that a lot of it’s going to be new” to viewers, Mitchell said, and “highlight the pageantry and emotion” of the World Cup.
According to Mitchell, the Soweto Gospel Choir combines traditional American Baptist gospel sounds, with traditional African music and pop influences.
The choir, which will perform in the company cafeteria around lunchtime, sings in some South African dialects – the country has about a dozen – and performs much of its music in English, as well, he said.
Much of their catalog has a religious bent, but Mitchell said the choir also draws from music traditionally used to cope with hardships and also from protest music.
“They also do covers of pop tunes,” said Mitchell. “It’s kind of all over the place.”
Mitchell said ESPN will use work from the choir’s catalog, but is also talking with them about the possibility of new songs specifically for the World Cup event.
ESPN is bringing the choir to Bristol to help build excitement among the staff for the World Cup and to give the choir a chance to get to know ESPN.
Coverage of the World Cup is a company-defined top priority for ESPN this year.