It was February in New York’s famous Flux Studios, where the Rolling Stones and Nat King Cole once recorded. Upstairs, producer Fabulous Fab (Fabrice du Pont) was mixing the new Freshlyground album, Radio Africa. Downstairs in the basement, Shakira’s producer, John Hill, was working on a Fifa World Cup song for the Colombian superstar.
Discovering that the South African band was in the building, Hill approached the group with the enticing proposal — that they put an African feel to the Shakira track.
Freshlyground got to work, bringing their own spunk and feel to the song, Time for Africa.
“It’s pretty amazing and magical that this guy just happened to be downstairs,” Zolani Mahola, Freshlyground’s lead vocalist, told the Mail & Guardian this week. “Things happened very fast, very organically.”
The band had no idea at that stage that their collaboration with Shakira on Time for Africa would be chosen by Fifa and Sony Music Entertainment as the official World Cup anthem for 2010.
Josh Hawks, Freshlyground’s bass guitarist, said they came up with their own ad-libbed chorus, which became the hook line of the song.
“We only found out about two weeks ago that the song had been chosen as the official World Cup anthem,” the band’s manager, Sevi Spanoudi, told the M&G.
“Instrumentally, Freshlyground are very present in the song — especially Julio’s [Sigauque] Afrocentric guitar-playing style,” she said, adding that Zolani Mahola’s familiar, swooping vocals can also be heard on the track.
Snagging the World Cup anthem is perfect timing for Freshlyground. Said Hawks: “Already, just being in a collaboration with Shakira gets us a whole lot of attention. And our fourth album [Radio Africa] is coming out on May 3.”
The World Cup anthem is due to be released to radio stations around the world towards the end of next week and will be downloadable through digital retail outlets from Monday.
Freshlyground will perform the song with Shakira live at the World Cup kick-off concert in Soweto on June 10.
Shakira was not in the studio when the band recorded the track in February and by this week Freshlyground had still not met the Latino fusion star.
Time for Africa is the main track on Listen Up: The Official 2010 Fifa World Cup Album, which features other international artists and will be released by Sony weeks before kick-off.