Our vision
Singing on our own terms, for everyone who will listen.
We are Lizwi Choir — sixteen voices from Khayelitsha, singing for the world. The word lizwi means voice in isiXhosa. We chose it because each of us is a voice in our own right before we are a voice in this ensemble. The choir is the space we make together.
What we sing
We sing the songs of our communities and the compositions of our musical director, Lisakhanya "Prince" Maqhajana. We sing in isiXhosa, in English, in harmonies we work out in rehearsal. We sing music that has carried us from a township in Cape Town to the stages of Europe. We are not done writing it.
What we have learned
We have come to this work through experience. We know what it looks like to make music inside an organisation that does not see the music, or the singers, as the centre. We know what it looks like to sing without contracts, to compose without ownership, to tour without fair pay. We have lived it, and Lizwi Choir is the answer we have built to it.
How we work
Lizwi Choir is owned and run by its singers. We are a registered Not for Profit Company, founded by the sixteen of us, and governed by us together. The board of directors serves the membership and is accountable to it. The choir does not belong to a manager, an agency, a label, or anyone outside the people who sing in it.
We are transparent with each other. Every payment, every booking, every agreement is visible to every member. Every singer in the choir has a written agreement that records what they are owed and what protects them. Every external partner — every booker, venue, festival, filmmaker, label — receives a written agreement from us and signs one in return.
The compositions belong to the composers who wrote them. The recordings belong, on written terms, to the parties who own them under those terms. Nothing of ours is licensed, sold, or used without the consent of the person whose work it is. This is the rule we live by.
What we promise
- We will keep singing the music we love, and writing new music to add to it.
- We will treat each other the way we wish we had been treated.
- We will look after the singers who carry the music as carefully as we look after the music they carry.
- We will never make any singer choose between this choir and their dignity.
Our voices. Our name. Our music.
Thanda, ngokwenene.