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They’re celebrating God’s blessings one performance at a time.

The Soweto Gospel Choir, having already toured dozens of countries around the world, are in Bermuda to perform for the first time at the Bermuda Festival. Lucas Bok, the choir’s assistant choirmaster and music director, is in Bermuda with the 26-member choir and spoke with us about the choir and how it began.

The Choir was founded in 2001 by Choirmaster David Mulovhedzi and Executive Producer, Beverly Bryer, who held auditions to form a choir from Soweto (near Johannesburg in South Africa) to travel the world and perform.

Their first tour was in 2002 in Australia. From there, they performed at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. Following that they toured Germany, Berlin, Singapore, Spain, the U.K. and Scandinavia. Last year they toured the U.S., and will return there for a 46-city tour following their performance at the Bermuda Festival.

Bok said: “The thing that amazes me is that it seems like everywhere we go we tend to get the same kind of response. People are enjoying the music and although they don’t understand the native language we might sing in, their souls have been touched. People will come up after the show and they’ll still be in tears, and tell us: ‘You touched me.’ The response we have been getting is phenomenal.

“There is no way that we can do that on our own. Just the fact that music is a universal language — it’s got its own way to speak to souls and to speak to people’s hearts. It’s happening for us.”

The show contains not only singing in as many as six different languages, but also dancers, drummers and a four-piece band. There is also a capella singing.

Bok says that the choir’s choice of musical genre reflect their wish to praise God. “It’s a true reflection of how we feel and where we are at as a country right now as well. We do a Zulu traditional dance — that’s our form of praise. There’s a lot of other moves and choreography that we do as well.”

He added: “The show is exuberant. It’s very vibrant — we are filled with so much optimism. Our music reflects that. It’s a very, very talented show, full of talent.”

The choir also has a CD, ‘Blessed’, which will be on sale at performances.

The choir has also added a special 3pm performance on Sunday. Bok says that everywhere they went, Bermudians told them that they couldn’t attend the performances because they sold out too quickly.

“We’re doing it especially for the people here — we’re doing it for Bermuda,” Bok said.

The Soweto Gospel Choir will perform at 8pm each night from January 27- 29, as well as the matinee performance at 3pm on Sunday. Tickets are available online at www.bermudafestival.org for the Sunday performance. Tickets are also available from the Box Office at 296-5774.[[In-content Ad]]

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