logo
Zulu children's choir performs across the West

Zulu children's choir performs across the West

Yahoo01-06-2025
A South African children's choir has been performing across the west of England as it takes part in a cultural exchange tour.
Made up of 20 school children from the Madadeni Township in South Africa, the choir is visiting the UK as part of Project Zulu, an initiative by the University of the West of England (UWE).
Raising funds for their schools back home, they have showcased their traditional Zulu song in a number of West Country locations, including a Bristol Bears game and in Bath and Bristol city centres.
Project leader, Ben Knight, said their final performance would take place at the Bristol Beacon on 5 June.
Project Zulu arranges for choirs from South African townships to tour the UK every two years.
Mr Knight said UWE students studying professions such as teaching, engineering and occupational therapy were sent out to the township in South Africa annually to "spend a few weeks making valuable contributions to the educational life of schools in the township".
Then every two years a choir, made up of children from two partnership schools, are brought over to Bristol to spend three weeks performing and sharing their talent and culture.
"They've been busking, they've put on concerts," he said.
Mr Knight explained the tour aimed to raise money for the two schools involved.
"They are over here sharing their extraordinary talents and culture but also earning money to develop their educational opportunities back home," he said.
He said this year, one school planned to use the money to develop solar energy and the other hoped to buy IT equipment.
"Every penny that is made goes directly back to their schools," he said.
"A little bit of your money goes a really long way in South Africa," he added.
Mr Knight said "right at the heart of the project" was a "desire to bring people who live a long way apart, and lead very different lives, together".
Follow BBC Bristol on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.
Volunteer families sought to host Zulu choir
Zulu children's choir performance delights crowds
Choir earns £970 in 90-minute busk
Project Zulu
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

A baseball field in a racetrack? MLB's Speedway Classic makes history
A baseball field in a racetrack? MLB's Speedway Classic makes history

Yahoo

time6 hours ago

  • Yahoo

A baseball field in a racetrack? MLB's Speedway Classic makes history

BRISTOL, Tenn. — A 110-foot Ferris wheel. Race cars painted in MLB team colors. Food trucks. Live music. Pitching tunnels and batting cages. A chance for photos with the Commissioner's Trophy. And Clydesdales. Of course, there's merchandise available for any fans who forgot to grab their gear supporting the Atlanta Braves or Cincinnati Reds or simply commemorating a spectacle unlike any other. 'My sister's already texted me asking for a t shirt,' said Marcia Lorenzo, 39, from Charleston, South Carolina. After about four years in the planning, it's finally time for the MLB Speedway Classic to play ball Saturday night on the diamond constructed on the infield at Bristol Motor Speedway at the place called the 'Last Great Colisseum!' 'When you walk up to Bristol Motor Speedway, much like many of our venues, you know you're at a big iconic sports location,' said Jeremiah Yolkut, MLB's senior vice president of global events. 'You feel it. You walk into Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, you feel it. And that's what Bristol Motor Speedway is for NASCAR.' The MLB Speedway Classic was first announced nearly a year ago as part of Commissioner Rob Manfred's push to take MLB to places where baseball isn't played every day live. MLB played a game at the movie site in Iowa in both 2021 and 2022. Alabama, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, too. Now it's time for Tennessee, which has teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLS but no MLB team even as a group chases an expansion franchise for Nashville. This game mixes the rich racing history of both Bristol, which hosts a pair of NASCAR races each year, and Tennessee. 'So we quickly worked to make it so that we could viably create this magic moment and give fans that don't get regular season baseball all the time, an opportunity to see it right there in their backyard in Tennessee,' Yolkut said. The Reds, chasing an NL wild-card berth, split the first two games in this series with Atlanta. The rubber match will be a part of history as the first Major League Baseball game played in the state of Tennessee. They will play before the largest crowd ever to see an MLB regular-season game, too. Reds outfielder Austin Hays said this will be a fun game and can't wait to see how loud it gets. 'I used to go to the truck races and the (Daytona) 500, the Rolex. I went to high school near Daytona,' Hays said Friday after the Reds' 3-2 win over Atlanta. 'It is the only track I've ever been to. It's a pretty big track. I imagine it's going to be similar standing on the infield, but it will be a baseball field this time.' MLB didn't try to sell every ticket inside the speedway that drew 156,990 for the Battle of Bristol college football game in 2016. The track with a racing capacity of 146,000 could host 90,000 or more even with sections blocked off. Officials announced Monday more than 85,000 tickets had been sold — topping the previous paid attendance of 84,587 set Sept. 12, 1954, when Cleveland Stadium hosted the New York Yankees. Sean Casey, a three-time All-Star now on the MLB Network, sees this as two super powers coming together in a perfect partnership. NASCAR and baseball already cross over in the Atlanta and Cincinnati markets, and this crossover exposes fans to the other sport. 'It's such a unique situation,' Casey said Friday after broadcasting from the field with MLB Network. 'Kudos to (Commissioner) Rob Manfred of Major League Baseball and also NASCAR and Bristol Motor Speedway for putting this event together because it's going to be one of a kind.' Once the time comes for fans to move inside Bristol, the schedule features a pre-game concert with Jake Owen joining stars Tim McGraw and Pitbull. A flyover by Navy jets, and a pair of Hall of Famers in Atlanta's Chipper Jones and Johnny Bench of the Reds will handle the ceremonial first pitch. Hunter Greear from Charleston, South Carolina, bought tickets with three friends a year ago. They arrived Thursday camping out and enjoying the weekend. Greear said they really didn't know what to expect from MLB putting a baseball field in the infield of a racetrack. 'We had an idea,' Greear said. 'But everything that's been leading up to (the game) really has been making that idea even bigger than we could possibly expect it to be.'

MLB Speedway Classic 2025: Here's How to Watch the Braves vs. Reds Live Online with Sling TV
MLB Speedway Classic 2025: Here's How to Watch the Braves vs. Reds Live Online with Sling TV

Yahoo

time6 hours ago

  • Yahoo

MLB Speedway Classic 2025: Here's How to Watch the Braves vs. Reds Live Online with Sling TV

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. For the first time ever, two Major League Baseball teams will play against each other at a motorsports colosseum in a new partnership between MLB and NASCAR. The MLB Speedway Classic takes place on Saturday, Aug. 2. The game is expected to break the record for the regular-season attendance at more than 85,000 fans. More from Variety PFL World Tournament 2025: How to Watch PFL 8 Welterweights & Featherweights Live Online NFL Hall of Fame Game: How to Watch L.A. Chargers vs. Detroit Lions Live Online Without Cable for Free How To Watch Leagues Cup 2025 Online Broadcasting on Fox, you can watch the Atlanta Braves take on the Cincinnati Reds at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee with first pitch at 7:15 p.m. PT. Want to watch the game online? Fox is a network available via Sling Blue. Watch MLB Speedway Classic 2025 on Sling TV Right now, Sling Blue is up to half off for the first month of service. The streaming package comes with Fox for the MLB Speedway Classic, while Sling Blue comes with other networks, like ABC (in select markets) Bravo, Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, E!, Fox Sports, FX, Fox News, MSNBC, National Geographic, SYFY, TLC, USA Network, A&E, AMC, BBC America, BET, CNN, Comedy Central, Food Network, Fuse, HGTV, History Channel, IFC, Lifetime, Nick Jr., QVC, TBS, TNT, Travel Channel, Vice and many others. Meanwhile, Sling Blue also comes with one month of AMC+ for free. The streaming service add-on features hit originals, including 'Gangs of London,' 'Happy Valley,' 'Kin,' 'Ragdoll,' 'The Walking Dead: Dead City' and others. Additionally, AMC+ has on-demand episodes of 'Mad Men,' 'Breaking Bad,' 'Better Call Saul,' 'Halt and Catch Fire' and more. Please note: Prices and channel availability depends on your local TV market. Learn more about Sling subscription prices here. All Sling plans have live TV over the internet, on-demand movie and TV shows, 50 hours of cloud DVR storage and up to three streams across devices — such as smart TVs, smartphones, tablets, laptops and web browsers — at the same time. On Saturday, Aug. 2, you can livestream the MLB Speedway Classic 2025: Atlanta Braves vs. Cincinnati Reds, with a start time of 7:15 p.m. ET/4:15 p.m. PT on Fox with Sling Blue, below: Watch MLB Speedway Classic 2025 on Sling TV Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week What's Coming to Disney+ in August 2025 What's Coming to Netflix in August 2025

The Afropop Girls Making This Summer Sexy
The Afropop Girls Making This Summer Sexy

Yahoo

time12 hours ago

  • Yahoo

The Afropop Girls Making This Summer Sexy

On Friday, July 26, the day of the week new music drops regularly, three of the hottest pop stars out of Africa doled out the steamiest trifecta of releases this year. Nigerian singer Ayra Starr's latest song is literally about being hot. South African star Tyla came with a four-pack EP called WWP, short for We Wanna Party. And Ghanaian-American shapeshifter Amaarae broke barriers with her new single 'Girlie-Pop!' and its steamy, queer-coded music video. It was a day that crystallized a pattern that had been forming all year: the women of Afropop are bringing sexy back. Much of their movement, like others across media right now, is Y2K-indebted. Skirts and tops have gotten microscopic, bottoms are being slung below the waist again, and lots of producers seem to be doing their best impressions of early Pharrell. But that time also came with some trends in how women's sexuality was marketed and received that we now find disturbing, to say the least. We can see that Britney Spears, the queen of Y2K, was someone whose personhood and sexuality was often devoured and exploited as she explored both as a young girl (her iconic and controversial 1999 Rolling Stone cover is an emblem of how complicated it is to make a teenager a sex symbol). We now know Janet Jackson was unfairly shamed and punished after Justin Timberlake exposed her pasty-covered breast during their 2004 Super Bowl performance. Today, while some of the cultural relics of that time have rolled back around, many young women may have more agency about why, when, and how they want to participate. More from Rolling Stone Tyla Summer Kicks Off With 'WWP' Mixtape Justin Bieber, Blackpink, Tyla, and All the Songs You Need to Know This Week Tyla Asks 'Is It' Wrong for a New Romance to Feel So Right on Latest Single It feels like that agency is what we're witnessing in Afropop. Ayra Starr — who emerged in 2021 as a cunning 19-year-old surrounded by cartoon butterflies and broken hearts — has grown more edgy in her dress and performance as she's gotten older. In May, she inched towards summer with the fiery 'Gimme Dat,' video featuring Wizkid, and last week, she finally released her much-anticipated new single 'Hot Body.' 'Body be dancing/Slow wine/Summer body/So fine,' she sings on the strip tease of a song. As she breadcrumbed the track on social media over the past few weeks, she could be seen hitting a seductive, TikTok ready dance to it with her girlfriends, and it truly looks like she's having a blast. Just a few days ago, on July 27, she giddily celebrated performing the song with Coldplay, who she's touring with as an opening act this summer. Before she took the stage, Chris Martin, who eagerly accompanied her on acoustic guitar, told the crowd, 'Ok, everybody, listen. We will do something special because this is Ayra Starr from Nigeria. She is going to be the world's biggest pop star soon and she has a new song called 'Hot Body' which I think is amazing. So please indulge us and join us for a big dance party.' Dancing, of course, has been Tyla's thing since she captivated the mainstream with 'Water' in 2023. (Cute Y2K fashion has become a bit of a calling card for her, as it has for Starr. They've been friendly collaborators, both 23 years old.) The rollout and name of Tyla's new EP, WWP, takes cues from the popular nightlife chant '[Insert name of DJ or performer leading the crowd here], we wanna party!' That makes perfect sense for a girl who's always been about partying so hard you're soaked, whether with sweat or the contents of your plastic bottle. Tyla's WWP features 'Bliss,' a track whose music video spawned an excellent meme about being sexy and sad at once. It takes the quick cut between a scene of the singer fighting tears and another of her grinding against a silver sculpture in desert sand. 'Idk if we're supposed to shake ass or cry' one YouTube commenter wrote to the tune of 15,000 likes. The full WWP EP includes two songs that debuted this month, one being 'Dynamite,' an energizing collaboration with Wizkid (it's the pair's first and feels reminiscent of Ayra Starr hopping on Star Boy's '2 Sugar' earlier in her rise). The song that really cements the sexy, though, is 'Mr. Media.' While the track lambasts the voyeuristic sensationalism she's faced in the public eye, she uses the second verse to remind herself why she shouldn't care: 'Bad bitch, I ain't always got time to talk/Too bad, yeah, I know I'm difficult/You'd be too if you had my visuals/You'd be too if you had material.' Amaarae seems to be channeling a similar devil-may-care confidence as she gears up to release Black Star, her third studio album set to drop August 8. On Friday, she shared the second single, 'Girlie-Pop!' following the erotic 'S.M.O.' (for 'Slut Me Out'). 'Girlie-Pop!' ushers in this new era of Amaarae's powerfully, honing a familiar balance of softness, urgency, and cleverly sensual songwriting with a righteously queer arc. Using music as an extended allegory, she coos, 'I want you to take me from the top/Kiss me 'til I tell you, 'Make it soft'/One of us gotta bring this to a stop/Flip positions, switching genres 'til you make it pop.' In the moody video, Amaarae nearly sings into the mouth of another woman, the camera lingering on their lips. In other moments, their heads swirl around each other's face and neck. When that's not happening, the woman is DJing, potentially another bit of innuendo. Amaarae's imagery and music has sometimes teetered towards homoerotic (in the 'S.M.O.' video, for example, one might say she's literally waxing a beautiful woman's ass) but 'Girlie-Pop!' marks a bold embrace of queerness for a Ghanaian artist of her magnitude. For years, Ghanaian lawmakers have notoriously been pushing virulent anti-LGBTQ legislation and now they have a president reportedly committed to passing them. Amaarae declaring that the video was shot in Ghana 'with loveeeeee' is a radical act. 'My real mission is for us to not think about sexuality, or to subvert it so much to the point where it subconsciously takes people away from that,' she told Galore about her last album, Fountain Baby, in 2023. 'I wanted to make the music so sexy and captivating that you kind of wouldn't think about what pronouns I was using, no matter if you are straight, gay, pansexual, whatever. That was my way of trying to slowly break that boundary that things have to be in boxes and confined and defined.' So much of this Summer of Sexy has actually been brewing since 2024. Moliy's 'Shake It to the Max (Fly)' is currently one of the biggest songs in the world, and the Ghanaian singer first teased it back in October with a short snippet on TikTok. Today there have been 4.5 million videos made with a remix featuring dancehall stars Skillibeng and Shenseea on the app. In fact, there's been five remixes total, including versions with Sean Paul and Major Lazer. Though Moliy is African, 'Shake It to the Max' has always been a dancehall song, produced by Silent Addy and Disco Neal of the DJ duo Bashment Sound. On July 29, Billboard announced that the song had hit Number One on their Rhythmic Airplay chart, meaning it's a certified smash on American radio. It's also been sitting at Number One on the U.S. Afrobeats Song chart for 12 consecutive weeks, too. 'Shake It to the Max' has reached these heights as a viral anthem for baddies to let loose and whine their waists. Make sure you get out there and heed Moliy's call over the next month. Loosies: More music to move to summer Rema's 'Kelebu' and Theodora's 'Kongolese Sous BBL': So, in honor of the Summer of Sexy, I'm writing about these two at once, as Francophone singer Theodora's burgeoning hit is, in a way, an energetic ancestor to 'Kelebu,' Rema's excellent new party-starter. 'Kelebu' seems inspired by Bouyon, a high-octane dance music from Dominica, as well as Makossa from Cameroon and Coupé-décalé from Côte d'Ivoire (Theodora was born in Switzerland to Congolese parents and has lived all over the world). These are all threads Theodora has been pulling from the past few years, with the excellent 'Kongolese Sous BBL' becoming her biggest hit with well over 47 million streams on Spotify. Rema's closest collaborator, the producer London, also worked with Theodora on her song 'Massoko Na Mabele' from this past May. Darkoo, 'Right Now' featuring Rvssian and Davido: Intuitively, Nigerian hitmaker Darkoo titled her June EP $exy Girl $ummer. 'A lot of the top people in the game who are making music aren't making music for girls,' she told Apple Music. 'They are making music that women like, but it's not about them, and that's what I'm doing. I want them to feel like the sexiest women in the world.' This song definitely does it as the openly queer Darkoo and enthusiastic Davido promise to give some fortunate ladies the world. The song samples Gyptian's Jamaican hit 'Whine Slow,' which Rvssian himself produced. Daddy Lumba, 'Se Sumye Kasa A': This last Loosie is a tribute to Ghanaian legend Daddy Lumba, who died at age 60 on July 26. While he's known as a highlife maven, his music had diverse influences, from gospel to hip-hop, like you can hear on 2002's 'Se Sumye Kasa A.' 'Daddy Lumba really is a risk taker of his time,' Amaarae said in 2023, part of an interview she re-shared in memoriam of Lumba. She had praised his affinity for 'Bad bitches,' adding, 'At a time where male highlife artists were taking very romantic approaches to the way they were writing their music, Daddy Lumba said 'Look, I love the hoes and the hoes love me'.' Made in Africa is a monthly column by Rolling Stone staff writer Mankaprr Conteh that celebrates and interrogates the lives, concerns, and innovations of African musicians from their vantage point. Don't forget to check out the songs we covered this month and more in the Made In Africa playlist. Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked Solve the daily Crossword

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store