A hush grips the auditorium because the long-awaited live performance by one of many world’s most famous chorales will get underway.
Wearing neatly-ironed shirts and white frills over royal-blue waistcoats, the Drakensberg Boys School Choir launches into Vivaldi’s “Gloria” and a collective thrill runs by way of the viewers.
The music and the dramatic backdrop of the Drakensberg mountains set the seal on the choir’s first in-person Christmas live performance for the reason that Covid pandemic.
The ensemble, whose members are aged between 9 and 15 years, is one South Africa’s most interesting cultural exports — its most racially and culturally numerous chorale, and a beacon of hope in a troubled nation.
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The choir makes use of “music as vehicle for social mobility, for academic success (and) personality-building in a country that has been riddled by issues of race,” mentioned Pitika Ntulia, a cultural historian.
“The school is almost magical, the location in the mountains… the fact that we can sing almost in the mountains everyday, it’s amazing,” mentioned Nicholas Robinson, 14, standing tall on manicured lawns, sporting a black blazer.
A fellow pupil on the boarding faculty, constructed on a 100-acre (40-hectare) property within the Champagne Valley close to the border with Lesotho, Ethan Palagangwe, 12, hails from Mitchells Plain, a crime-riddled Cape Town suburb.
Palagangwe landed a scholarship out of 1,600 boys auditioned after his mom responded to an advert in a neighborhood newspaper.
Born to a law-enforcement officer and a singer, the brief and round-faced boy smiles, reminiscing how he began singing at house, aged eight.
“We would sing out of nowhere, singing karaoke,” he says.
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He is now one of many faculty’s high musical achievers.
Boarding and tuition on the faculty price between $8,600 and $11,500 yearly, relying on age.
Palagangwe’s charges are collectively raised between well-wishers in a scholarship scheme dubbed “back-a-buddy”.
‘Rainbow voices’
The multilingual choir’s repertoire ranges from classics to modern pop and conventional tunes.
“This is the only choir in the world that can sing in any genre,” boasts conductor Vaughan van Zyl, mopping his forehead between rehearsals on the peak of the South African summer time.
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“Give these boys anything classical, pop, African traditional music from other countries — different languages… sacred music, secular music, they can do it all.”
Styled on Austria’s Vienna Boys choir, the Drakensberg chorale began 55 years in the past on the peak of the apartheid period with 21 boys, all white.
Today, it has a multi-racial roll name of 70 college students, who carry out at house or across the globe when they don’t seem to be busy with classes and exams.
One of the choir’s proudest moments was to stage a present for Nelson Mandela atop the Drakensberg mountain.
“In that choir you hear the rainbow voices,” mentioned historian Ntuli, in reference to the “Rainbow Nation” time period utilized by Desmond Tutu to describe post-apartheid South Africa.
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Lulo Dlulane, 11, not too long ago joined the varsity. He needs to pursue a profession in music manufacturing and composing.
“Music is a language of all sorts,” he mentioned, clutching award certificates he had simply obtained. It “connects people… and just unites us”.
His mom, Lungelwa Dlulane, a 39-year-old music-loving medical physician, mentioned she heard in regards to the choir as a teen, and “prayed” to have a son so she may ship him to the varsity.
‘Boys become men’
The gumboot dance, a uniquely South African dance carried out whereas carrying wellington boots to highly effective percussion, is one the boys flawlessly transition to after singing classics.
“Choreography and dancing is such a (big) part of what we do,” mentioned Van Zyl.
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Baritone William Berger, 43, performs opera internationally, thanks to his grounding on the faculty.
What distinguishes the Drakensberg from different choirs is “this full-bodied African sound,” not “like this light European kind of typical boys’ choir noise,” he mentioned.
The faculty’s first black pupil, Loyiso Bala, joined in 1990, 4 years earlier than apartheid was swept away. Today, he is without doubt one of the nation’s hottest musicians.
Packing tutorial obligations, sports activities and a every day two-hour music rehearsals, isn’t any imply feat.
“It’s ultimately through that very challenge… they build resilience” and self-discipline, mentioned faculty head Dave Cato.
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Those treasured expertise might be put to use when the youngsters depart the cocoon of the varsity.
They can have to discover a method ahead in life, in a rustic beset by crime, poverty and the lingering wounds of apartheid.
The faculty “is a place where boys become men,” mentioned Bongi Msimang-Luthuli, mom of pupil Khwezilomso Msimang, 15.
By Susan Njanji © Agence France-Presse