Welcome
Before you go any further, listen to one of our favorite songs. You can read on only if you like the sound. (Click on the link below.)
Look also below at the video of the Vuvuzela Orchestra performing at the PANSA auditions in Cape Town.
The aim of the Vuvuzela Orchestra is to showcase South Africa as one of the most musical nations on earth during the 2010 Soccer World Cup and beyond.
The Vuvuzela Orchestra is a concept inspired in equal part by ancient African music making traditions and by contemporary South African soccer culture.
Watching a soccer game in a stadium in SA is a very musical experience because you find yourself in the midst of a group of fans doing call and response patterns on their one note Vuvuzelas, singing great African soccer songs and dancing. You can hear in the background thousands of other Vuvuzelas in the stadium mixing their own rhythms making that by now infamous Vuvuzela drone but the immediate sound around you is musical and very infectious.
Watching on TV all you can hear is just noise so most people see the vuvuzela as a noise-maker rather than a musical instrument, but the Vuvuzela Orchestra defies that perception. We modify standard vuvuzelas to produce seven instruments playing seven different notes. The seven vuvuzela notes produce chords to accompany the fans in singing soccer songs in arrangements that also involve the fans playing rhythms on their standard vuvuzelas. In performance a trumpet and a drummer provide the melodic and rhythmic framework and a singer leads the songs and talks directly to the fans.
Our performances can be very interactive and can cover a wide range of contexts from small corporate events to stadium activations involving thousands of fans. (See Nelson Mandela Challenge video clip)
Note: This style of making music is based on the very democratic concept of “One Person, One Note” inspired by ancient traditional African pipe ensembles such as the Dinaka and the Tshikona which are very much alive in South Africa today. (See the Roots Video).