The Joy started as a school choir in Hammarsdale, KwaZulu-Natal singing a cappella, and blending IsiZulu harmonies to heavenly planes. For the five members —Ntokozo “Pastor” Magcaba, Melokuhle “Duzie” Mkhungo, Sphelele “Guduza” Hlophe, Phelelani “Sthombe” Sithole and Sanele “Marcus” Ngcobo — the only thing that’s changed is the size of the room.
I catch all five of them on a video call from KwaZulu-Natal, where the internet is playing hard to get. Their answers are short and polite, and they would clearly rather sing than explain. But the CV does plenty of talking for them.
That sound grows out of isicathamiya, the IsiZulu a cappella style whose name comes from the word for walking softly, and mbube, its louder cousin. It’s tight, stacked harmony, five voices moving as one. It also turns out to travel well.
In November 2022 they were at the Hammersmith Apollo in London for Jools Holland’s birthday bash. A month later they were on The Jennifer Hudson Show and Hudson has since called them her “favourite band” and invited them onto her Christmas album, The Gift of Love. Alicia Keys and Sam Smith are fans too. Keys, according to The National, once told Duzie not to lose the “grit” in his lead vocals.
Then came Coachella.
Sthombe is the first to admit he had no idea what he was walking into. The invitation came through management and Doja Cat’s team wanted a collaboration and a spot on her stage.
“I didn’t know about Coachella, and I was not aware who Doja Cat was,” he says. “So I was asking my brothers: ‘Hey guys, who is Doja Cat?’ And one of our brothers, Duzie, told us who Doja Cat is. Then we were so surprised to get an invite from a big person like her.”
Duzie, it turns out, was the band’s pop-culture desk. They flew from South Africa to Los Angeles, rehearsed with her for two weeks, and walked on to one of the biggest stages in the world. She put three of their songs on her album Scarlet, so the introduction clearly took.
Was it scary?
A little, says Marcus. “It was scary, but not that much because we’re used to being on big stages.”
Glastonbury was a different kind of test. “It was a big venue with quite different stages, so while you’re performing on one stage, there are other artists performing on the other stages. The noise is too much,” one of them says.
“So we had to adjust, get into character and make sure we don’t get distracted. It was a matter of, are you really good at what you are doing? Because if you are bad, the audience will leave you and go to the other stage.”
Judging by the invitations that followed, nobody left.
What strikes me is how they tell all this. Los Angeles, London, a Jennifer Hudson couch, a festival field in Somerset: they describe it the way other people describe a busy week at the office. The glamour, it seems, is somebody else’s department. Theirs is the harmony.
Which brings us to Home, out on 13 November. It has been almost three years in the making. The group recorded plenty of songs, in London and Los Angeles, then faced the harder job of choosing.
They’ve been with their label for almost a year, and this is the first full statement of that new chapter.
“We’ve been recording plenty of songs, trying to select the ones that really touched us,” one of them says.
“I’m not saying the others didn’t but these are the ones we thought would reflect where we come from and how we see love. Most of the EP is about relationships and love from home, from partners, from families.”
Love is the operative word. I ask them to take me through the tracklist. Nearly every answer is some version of “it’s also a love song”.
Precious is a serenade to a girl who is exactly that. Omunye is a man who has found his one and only and isn’t taking questions. Last Chance is a plea for a second go, which most of us have attempted at some point, with mixed results. One track is a wedding number, because a vocal group worth its harmonies needs one. The title track is about home, with the careful clarification that it is “not missing home”.
The latest single, Jessica, began as one member’s idea and was built out by the rest. That’s how most of their songs come together.
They started out purely a cappella, so now that instruments have joined the party, it works like this:
“In the band, we are gifted in different ways. Whoever hears the first idea, we sit on it and then see how we can all contribute and make a chorus.”
The instruments come courtesy of an international producer line-up, The National reports, including Henry Kwapis, Kito and Noah Beresin.
But the group says nobody asked them to sing less in Zulu or sand down the low vocals and church influences. They have also told the publication that when they disagree: “We don’t vote. We sing.”
It’s also a fun jaunt. Eight tracks in 24 minutes means nothing outstays its welcome and the harmonies do the heavy lifting.
I ask what they hope listeners take away.
“They’ll be so excited,” one of them says. “They’ve been waiting for us to release songs, so they are ready for anything.”
First, the UK. The group plays the Barbican in London on 22 November as part of the London Jazz Festival, their biggest venue there so far, followed by Bristol on 23 November and Manchester on 25 November.
South African dates are still to come. They’ll only say that something is “definitely coming up”.
“We still want to make more music for them, so they must stay tuned.”
Five voices, one sound and three years of waiting. I, for one, need to see this live.