BIANCA SOLOMONS,

an aspiring opera singer from Cape Town, and her vocal coach Maritza Truter have recorded a version of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot which they hope to perform at Twickenham. Obviously, there is a degree of commercial opportunism here. Solomons has ambitions to be South Africa’s equivalent of Charlotte Church, and her success would do no harm to Truter’s career, either. Leaving that aside, however, it affords further proof that once a song is heard, nobody owns it, least of all the dusty academics who would place music in specialist boxes to rest untouched, like museum pieces.