ZAHARA....to this I sing.

Every morning without fail, the music begins to blast from my host brother's room at 6 AM. Usually it's gospel music (Sunday's are like a church rival here), house, old school 90's American hip hop (Tupac since that's what they love here - West Siiiide!), Akon, Neyo, Chris Brown, Beyonce or Rihanna. So when Bokamoso, started to play this woman my ears sparked up to Zahara. She has a beautiful voice with very soothing rhythms.

South Africa has 11 official languages, of which most people speak at least two. Most South Africans speak their "home language" and English. Home Language is whatever language was spoken in their homes when they were growing up. Often it will be the case that they have two home languages if they have parents from two different regions of the country, like say Eastern Cape where they speak Xhosa (when you see "X" it calls for a click of the tongue) and then Northern Cape where they speak mainly Afrikaans and Setswana (or simply "Tswana" which comes down from Botswana).

The Tswana and Xhosa mixture is what my host family is here. My host father, Papa Mokwena ("kwena" means "crocodile" in English, so we are people of the crocodile here), came down like many Botswana people to South Africa to find work in the mines. Papa Mokwena can speak fluently 3 languages: English, Afrikaans, and Tswana. My host mother's family comes from Eastern Cape and some people of her side of the family still speak Xhosa.

The diversity of language here is truly incredible. Zahara sings in Xhosa and English. Listen to one of her non-English songs and maybe you can hear the light but hard sounding clicks of her tongue. She has a radiant voice, enjoy!

This one really reminds me of Adele: LOLIWE


This one I love to dance to: LENGOMA

...and is very typical South African music, they are into the house music here.

This one make me want to feel sad and think of Tracy Chapman:


And this song I can truly sing along to: DESTINY