Stage
Dessa Needs You to Hear 29:11 | BackSTAGE
Clip: 10/17/2023 | 4m 50sVideo has Closed Captions
Rapper Dessa introduces you to South African Music Ensemble 29:11
Dessa introduces you to South African Music Ensemble 29:11. Based in Minnesota and South Africa 29:11 International Exchange hopes to facilitate hope and reconciliation through music, cross-cultural relationships, and individual artist development.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Stage is a local public television program presented by TPT
Stage
Dessa Needs You to Hear 29:11 | BackSTAGE
Clip: 10/17/2023 | 4m 50sVideo has Closed Captions
Dessa introduces you to South African Music Ensemble 29:11. Based in Minnesota and South Africa 29:11 International Exchange hopes to facilitate hope and reconciliation through music, cross-cultural relationships, and individual artist development.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- When you write a press release it sounds like, "Can you believe it?
A rapper and a South African choir."
But I don't think in practice it's that weird.
♪ Uvuleke ♪ Akhonto efana (nezwe) ♪ Akhonto efana (nezwe) ♪ Akhonto efana Years ago I was on tour with the Minnesota Orchestra in South Africa and on one of the stops I got to see these singers in a really humble environment.
It was like, a conference room.
(choir singing) Watching them sing sent my blood pumping in the opposite direction for a moment.
And they were part of a choir I later found out it was called 29:11.
- Oh wow.
(audience applauds) She kept this on her phone.
(laughs) (audience cheering) What?
She's got tears.
(laughs) - That is cool.
♪ Izulu nomhlaba kudalwe Nguye ♪ Izulu nomhlaba kudalwe Nguye Our chorus, it's 11 different tribes.
In South Africa that is not heard of.
We decided if we spread the message of reconciliation it should be all cultures in South Africa.
♪ We bless your name ♪ Almighty God ♪ We bow before your throne ♪ Be glorified ♪ Be glorified Apartheid simply means in English, a time apart, segregate.
That's what the government did back then to people of color, to black people.
And so my dad's family was split up.
He never saw his brothers and sisters because he was light-skinned and his brothers and sisters was dark skinned, blood brothers and sisters.
They split.
♪ We bow before your throne Okay, get it together.
They split their family up, and for the first time I met my uncles and aunties after apartheid, at my dad's funeral.
♪ We glorify ♪ We glorify This is what apartheid did.
And so through our music we just wanna spread this message of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is a phrase we use back in the days of apartheid, which simply means humanity.
We are all one people and that's the message I wanna spread.
♪ We bow before your throne (singers clap) ♪ ... sikelela ♪ thina lusapho lwayo Wherever we go, if we get the opportunity, we will sing, "Nkosi Sikelel'".
That is our national anthem because we could not sing it in public.
A few years ago, our ancestors, my grandparents my parents was jailed for that.
So because the government did not want that language.
And so to honor them, we sing "Nkosi Sikelel' Africa".
Which is simply means God bless Africa.
♪ ... sikelela ♪ Nkosi ♪ Sikelela ♪ Nkosi ♪ Sikelela ♪ God bless Africa ♪ God bless, Africa ♪ God bless Africa ♪ God bless, Africa ♪ God bless, Africa ♪ God bless ♪ Africa ♪ Africa (audience applauds) - Thank you, Minneapolis.
(audience cheering)
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Stage is a local public television program presented by TPT