@sheprettyp: Beyoncé “Halo” Global Citizen Festival Mandela 100 2018 December 2, 2018. FNB Stadium in Soweto. Seventy thousand activists in the audience. And Beyoncé walks out for Halo with not one but two South African choirs standing behind her on the stage… Let’s buzz into some history 🐝 Beyoncé originally invited the legendary Soweto Gospel Choir to join her for “Halo.” But when she shared that she wanted the stage to carry a younger, more youthful spirit alongside them, the choir expanded the vision and brought in the Mzansi Youth Choir too. The first group was the Soweto Gospel Choir. They are a three time Grammy winning ensemble founded in 2002, and they have spent over two decades becoming one of the most internationally celebrated choral groups to come out of South Africa. They have performed alongside Bono, Stevie Wonder, and Diana Ross. They sing in multiple South African languages, including Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, and Afrikaans, drawing from the rich gospel and traditional choral traditions of Black South Africa. And their 2019 Grammy win came for their album Freedom, which was itself a tribute to Nelson Mandela. They were Madiba’s own musical archivists standing on the soil that produced them. The second group was the Mzansi Youth Choir. The word Mzansi is the colloquial South African word for South Africa itself, drawn from the Xhosa and Zulu phrase uMzansi Afrika, which means the south of Africa. The Mzansi Youth Choir was founded to give South African youth a platform for musical excellence. FNB Stadium itself is sacred ground in modern South African history. It’s the largest stadium in Africa, and it was also the site of Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in 2013. For Beyoncé to stand in that exact stadium five years later singing alongside South African choirs during Mandela 100… that was intentional symbolism. #beyonce #globalcitizen #africa #soweto #mzansi

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Wednesday 13 May 2026 16:23:21 GMT