Vocal Chords: South African Singer Nobuntu Mpahlaza on the singing rituals of her home.

Singer Nobuntu Mpahlaza, who played the role of Queenie in Cape Town Opera's performance of the highly acclaimed musical 'Showboat', talked to us about her experience as a singer from South Africa and how singing is a major part of all their celebrations and rituals. Here, she gives us an example of one such ritual and the kind of celebration song they sing.

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Recordist Amy Millar.

Transcript: 00:00 Nobunto Mpahlaza: We must remember in South Africa there’s a lot of culture except for the political era of things that happened. In everything that happens there would always be a ritual, eh there’s a child whose born we have to have a ritual to celebrate they’re coming to the world. There are boys who go into the field, like into the forest, to become men, there’s a ritual...they. With everything that is- that is celebrated through music. Y’know so the rich songs that mothers will sing to their kids as they send them off to the forest to get circumcised and then they come back and we celebrate again. 00:33 Like they’ll be like sings. It’s a lovely song and the boys are back from the forest, they’re alive, and they are not boys anymore, they are- they are men. And there’s a whole culture that goes with that. 00:55

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