Rural stars as bright as the big city lights

While many artists don’t think twice about jumping at the chance to relocate to big cities to further their music careers, one Eastern Cape muso is shunning the lure of big city lights.

Instead 46-year-old Sonwabile “Snoux” Phoswa has set up a state-of-the-art recording studio at his rural home in Gxulu village, in Libode, where he mentors children who would not otherwise have had a chance to become music stars in the comfort of the their homes.

“I am what you call a charity-begins-at-home kind of guy,” he told the Saturday Dispatch.

But his idea of nurturing local rural talent does not only end there. He wants to see a music academy in his village in the near future.

The aim is to open the doors not only to children from his area and surrounds, but any black child who wants to become a musician or is interested in the arts.

He said the idea was to make sure that instead of having artists leave the province for greener pastures, they would stream into Gxulu to learn skills from production to marketing and the business side of the cut-throat music industry.

“For a place to be rich, it needs humans with capacity. But when there is a brain drain there is no progress.”

Despite his dislike for big city lights, he has also bought himself a posh suburban house in Pretoria where he houses Eastern Cape-born artists who are forced to sleep on the streets while hustling for a recording deal.

He spent 17 years in Europe and eight years in other African states.

Phoswa was born in Lesotho where his father had been exiled. His family owned a shop, which was the first port of call for South African freedom fighters going into exile in Lesotho.

He later moved to Tanzania where he enrolled at the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College where he also received military training as an ANC freedom fighter. He joined a music group, but it was when he received a scholarship to study in Germany that his talent showed.

He says he was able to live a life of luxury while in Germany, where he carved a successful career as a musician.

He managed to tour several countries in Europe and Africa while building a cult following. He also rubbed shoulders with the likes of RnB crooner Montell Jordan and rap legend Coolio, among others.

But he also discovered that some of the wealthiest musicians actually stayed in villages in Germany.

“As a result, you find villages with tarred roads. So if I were to leave this place, who will invest efforts in improving Gxulu?” — sikhon@dispatch.co.za