Scene & heard
He still has to pinch himself because he can’t believe he’s won the 15th season of Idols South Africa. “It’s so surreal,” says LUYOLO YIBA, who’s from King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape.
Here are five things you might not know about the singer, whom DJ Fresh dubbed “Bow-legged Lu” because of the shape of his legs.
1 Luyolo (24) realised he had a good singing voice at 13 after he was given a cellphone and instead of recording a spoken voicemail message he sang it. “That’s the first time I heard my voice being played back to me and I liked it.” 2 He graduated with a B Tech degree in IT from Walter Sisulu University in Mthatha and was working as a software developer for a computing consultancy company when he decided to enter Idols this year. 3 When he didn’t make it through the pre-audition stage in Port Elizabeth, he travelled to Cape Town to try out there. He made it through and when he auditioned for judges Randall Abrahams, Unathi Nkayi, Somizi Mhlongo and DJ Fresh, he got a resounding “yes” plus a golden ticket to the competition’s gruelling Theatre Week. 4 He entered the competition because he “just wanted to sing” but once he’d made the top 32 he realised he’d need more of a strategy.
“I realised everyone there could sing. There were times I thought I’d be sent home, but once I let go of my fear of what people would say about me I stopped just singing and started performing.” 5 The broken front tooth he had replaced while on Idols was the result of a bad fall in Grade 7. “It happened just before the annual photos were taken and I was the school joke. That was easily the most embarrassing time of my life.”
Thanks to an offer to have it fixed for free, Luyolo is smiling with confidence again.