Lesedi Show Choir

The South African Heidelberg is a small town with twenty thousand white Africans near Johannesburg. The hundreds of thousands of black Africans are living outside the city of Heidelberg in the township Ratanda.

For years now every night a group of young people meets in Ratanda with Thabang Mokoena. They sing, dance, drum together and express their joy, their passion, their feelings into music. For them, life in the township is not without perspective. They have found their purpose in life: the Lesedi Show Choir.

And they have a vision: This choir shall enable the most talented musicians to perform first-class accomplishments - a very ambitious target in a country with such a rich choral culture as South Africa. In his homeland, the Lesedi Show Choir competes successfully in choral competitions, appears on television and gives its own concerts, but usually still in front of black audiences only.

In Heidelberg on the Neckar River and in the region around it the regular appearances of the Lesedi Show Choir that are now an established tradition are given rapturous receptions. They not only impress by diverse African music, but shows the lifestyle of the black continent in expressive dances. Zulu-dance, modern dance and gumboot dance emphasize the character of the music and make each concert a unique experience for the senses.

Pictures: K. Dobhan, M. Blaser