Soul Kulture are taking it all in their stride
AFTER breaking into the music industry with a hit debut album, afro soul duo Soul Kulture were dealt a major blow when they failed Grade 11, something they attribute to their overnight success.
However with a new year came new beginnings, and the boys who were discovered at a taxi rank found a new school – and even with their album receiving multiple nominees at this year’s South African Music Awards (Samas), they say they have found a balance.
After the news of their three nominations for their album, Ngeliny’ilanga, both Afeletsi Manamathela and Msekeli Velaphi have become hot property. You released Ngeliny’ilanga in November last year and saw immediate success. What have the last six months been like? When we moved from the Eastern Cape to Cape Town, the plan was to one day make music, but we did not expect to be discovered and we definitely did not expect to release an album so soon, it all happened very fast.
The past few months have been a roller-coaster to say the least. We have learnt a lot and it has also been a little weird because we have had a major success with our music but our school work was negatively affected. The Samas are coming up and you have been nominated in three categories. Are you anxious? This is the first time we have been nominated for a Sama – hopefully it will not be the last. We are very excited about it and, to be honest, we can’t wait for the actual awards ceremony – it’s taking forever to get here.
You know it’s one thing to be nominated, but to be nominated in three categories is crazy. We did not expect this.
We are also very excited about it because we will also be performing at the awards ceremony. Has fame been overwhelming? Oh yes! Sometimes we have to stop and ask ourselves if this is really happening. For us, growing up we both loved music. We played instruments from a young age as well, but I don’t think that either of us ever saw ourselves making music that would be distributed and liked by so many people. What have you learnt in past six months? We have definitely learnt that we need to prioritise correctly. It’s great to have a hit album out but we realised after we failed that our education is important and we want to be able to fall back on something else. What are your plans for the future? The plan right now is to finish school. We both want to matriculate with good results so that we can go to university. We are working really hard at school and that is our focus at the moment. We are doing as little as possible in terms of live shows and travelling so that it does not interfere with our school timetable.
We want to study sound engineering and continue making music in the future.