HARARE - Gospel musician Sebastian Magacha has assembled a 15-member Pan-African group featuring several nationalities.
According to Magacha, the praise and worship group that has been fittingly named African Praise, is composed of Zimbabweans, Congolese, Zambians and Kenyans.
“It is a group with a difference because we have decided to take a different route from the others because we play live instruments,” said the musician.
“We settled on the name African Praise because we have different nationalities in the group.”
The three Zimbabweans in the Pan-African group are Magacha, his brother Tinashe and Kuda Mutsvene, a brother to prominent gospel star Mercy.
African Praise has already lined up tours in Australia scheduled for the end of May and Canada from mid-July to August.
“We have recorded a couple of songs. Our strategy is to continually release singles that will eventually be part of our maiden DVD,” said Magacha.
“We intend to record several songs before the tours that is why we are putting in a lot of work. Among the songs is the remake of Leonard Zhakata’s Kwekuturira which we remodelled into a worship track.
“I also recorded a song with my brother Tinashe who is a dancehall musician. We did a song called Handei which is a dancehall gospel. All these songs are with a live band.”
Benjamin Rupapa, the musician’s manager revealed that members of the 15-member ensemble were selected from various churches.
“It was then easy for us to pick out the ones we wanted. The foreign artistes were mostly recommended to us and we then had to attend their church services to see what they had to offer,” said Rupapa.
“We decided that assessing our targets in their churches was the best way because auditions do not always provide the right platforms to see artistes’ true abilities.”