Gospel choir tells story of house music with reimagined dance classics

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Shimmy Jiyane and Latroit about their new project to reimagine classic House tracks to tell the story of the roots of the genre – translated and sung by the choir in Zulu.

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: In the late 1980s, this track helped house music become a global sensation.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOOD LIFE")

INNER CITY: (Singing) Let me take you to a place I know you want to go. It's a good life, yeah.

SHAPIRO: It's called "Good Life," by Inner City. Music producer Dennis White, aka Latroit, was part of Inner City's live touring group.

LATROIT: We would play "Good Life" every night. I could feel when we were touring around the world - this music was from Detroit and Chicago, the Midwest, but there wasn't a big audience for it at that time. But "Good Life" had already become an international radio hit. And it was the first song in dance music, I believe, to go from underground parties to the radio, to take this music mainstream.

SHAPIRO: Well, more than 35 years later, Latroit has now helped create a new version of that song with South Africa's Soweto Gospel Choir.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GOOD LIFE (CHANTTY NATURAL REMIX)")

SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR: (Singing in Zulu).

SHIMMY JIYANE: "Good Life" was the biggest hit in South Africa. We brought the Zulu in it. We brought the traditional and the culture of the South African people.

SHAPIRO: That's the Soweto Gospel Choir's co-music director Shimmy Jiyane. Latroit and the gospel choir are two of the forces behind a new album called "History Of House." Along with the Australian producer known as Groove Terminator, they reimagined 50 years of house music in a dozen tracks. There are new choral arrangements of familiar tunes, lyrics that people have belted out on the dance floor for decades translated into Zulu. Jiyane told me house music has been a deep part of South African culture.

JIYANE: House music played a very important role. It was relevant to us because we would be like, oh, I know this song. Oh, my sister used to play this song. Oh, my brother loved this song. I used to play this song all the time, which is nice.

SHAPIRO: He was on the line from South Africa while Latroit was here in the States. I asked how they even began to narrow down half a century of house music into one album.

LATROIT: It was universal positivity, message-wise, the most positive of the tracks. House music is typically very positive and uplifting of itself. But because this is the Soweto Gospel Choir, we wanted to find tracks that had, you know, emotive and spiritual meanings, some of them, that could be amplified by the choir's vocals.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FREE")

SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR: (Singing in Zulu).

LATROIT: Our mission, the idea for the project was to bring dance music, which is undeniable - Western dance music, which is undeniably African American music, back to an African project and then re-export it to the world through an African perspective. That was the original sort of mission statement of the project.

JIYANE: It's actually putting our spark, our soul on top of what house music has. So also to infuse it and also redo the hits, like, the old hits into Zulu, and singing not in English but in Zulu, it was so important for us to do that and also to give it that - and also with that rhythm that comes with the traditional stuff.

SHAPIRO: The most evident difference between these tracks and the originals is the vocals, but percussion is also a huge part of house music. And, of course, drumming is also a huge part of traditional South African music. So how did you approach the beats on these tracks?

LATROIT: Our approach to the beats was to try to capture as much energy through live percussion performance as possible.

JIYANE: Yeah.

LATROIT: What's common in music production, particularly dance music production, we wanted to make sure from the very beginning that we weren't making a dance music album that had a gospel choir on top of it. That's been done. It's been done well. The world doesn't need that from us. We wanted to do something authentically, organically built from the ground up, that most of the molecules pushed around through the air belonged to us or were created by us, that were captured by performances that our percussionists and our live players did.

So as much live performance and percussion as possible explains, I think, how it is that the record breathes the way it does. And I'm really - Ari, I'm so grateful that you brought that up as a thing to mention because we worked really hard to capture that. And there were times - honestly, as a producer, there were so many times I was like, why am I trying so hard? No one's going to notice this.

(LAUGHTER)

LATROIT: And so that you asked the question means a lot.

SHAPIRO: One track where I definitely heard it was "Ride Like The Wind."

LATROIT: Oh, that one is so good.

SHAPIRO: So tell us what we're hearing.

LATROIT: You are hearing one of the greatest house music percussionists of all time named Duke Mushroom. Duke Mushroom played on the biggest New York house records in the '90s and I wanted him to have the opportunity to really shine on a recording in this project. And that is Duke Mushroom going for it, man.

(SOUNDBITE OF SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR SONG, "RIDE LIKE THE WIND")

SHAPIRO: Shimmy, can you tell me about translating the lyrics? Were there changes that you made or ways that you reinterpreted what the songs were about? Or did you try to be as loyal as possible to the original meaning of the words?

JIYANE: We actually changed a bit of the words. But we tried to maintain the originality of the words just to give - because we have to respect the song also and the hard work that was put on it, especially when it comes to the vocals and the writing of it. So but we changed and we put it - because sometimes interpreting an English word to a Zulu word, sometimes it gets very difficult.

SHAPIRO: Can you give us an example?

JIYANE: Yes, "World Hold On." (Singing in Zulu).

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WORLD HOLD ON")

SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR: (Singing in Zulu).

JIYANE: So if you go to the original, it says something else. And it's like, in English it's short. But in Zulu it sounds very long.

SHAPIRO: So the original English lyric is, world, hold on. Instead of messing with our future, open up inside. Is the meaning in Zulu the same as the meaning in English?

JIYANE: Yes, yes.

SHAPIRO: Got to say, I think it sounds better in Zulu.

JIYANE: (Laughter).

LATROIT: Ari, with the greatest respect to the English language, we all agree with you.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WORLD HOLD ON")

SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR: (Singing in Zulu).

SHAPIRO: So what do you hope listeners take away from this project about the connections and overlaps among South African music, Black American music, house music, dance music, the history of 50 years that you're covering here?

LATROIT: Speaking for myself, I hope they didn't notice any of that, Ari. I hope that they just come away with a musical experience that makes them feel naturally, organically good, that puts them in a better mood, that makes them nicer to their coworkers and their family members and their loved ones.

(LAUGHTER)

LATROIT: That's what we're going for here.

SHAPIRO: Shimmy?

JIYANE: I just hope and I wish they could just, you know, embrace this album, you know, and also love the music and also try and experience what we experience when we're in the studio and creating it but through feeling and emotions, you know? And I just hope they just get to go track by track trying to sing in Zulu.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PRIDE (A DEEPER LOVE)")

SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR: (Singing in Zulu).

JIYANE: Just imagine the whole world singing in Zulu, you know?

LATROIT: Oh, I like it. That's a world I want to live in.

JIYANE: Yeah, just imagine how it would sound. We just want to send a message of joy, peace, love and happiness throughout the world - people to be smiling, people to be positive about everything. Just be free, because that's what this album is all about.

SHAPIRO: Well, is there a track you would like us to go out on?

LATROIT: "Silence."

JIYANE: Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SILENCE")

SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR: (Singing in Zulu).

LATROIT: Phew. What happened there, Ari, is there was music over it. And I wasn't quite so sure about it, and I just hit mute, and it was just the choir. And I was like, all right...

JIYANE: (Laughter).

LATROIT: ...Well, let me get right out of the way of everybody here. Ladies and gentlemen, the choir.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SILENCE")

SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR: (Singing in Zulu).

SHAPIRO: That's producer Dennis White, aka Latroit, and Shimmy Jiyane co-music director of the Soweto Gospel Choir. Their new album "History Of House" is out now.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SILENCE")

SOWETO GOSPEL CHOIR: (Singing in Zulu).

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