Calm, collected and super talented! These words aptly describes the latest young artist to take the internet by storm. Born Aphiwe Surprise Moyo on the 16th December 2007 and currently doing form 2 at a rural school in Zimnyama, Plumtree. We unpack the young artist’s musical journey with his uncle Sobancane.

By Plot Mhako

The unplugged video clip of Aphiwe singing the song Inhliziyo yami together with his blind guitar playing uncle Sobancane went viral a few months subsequently leading to the recording of the track as their first studio track and later on a video for the song.

It is more fascinating that Sobancane is actually a neighbour to the boy who became an uncle by default. Sobancane has had a musical background, he was not born blind but lost his sight a few years ago due to a medical condition.

What started off as a pastime for Aphiwe is fast turning into a very promising career path. The young boy would occasionally go over next door to play with Sobancane’s acoustic his guitar and other neighbouring kids would pass by to watch him play. So, one day while watching his uncle play the guitar Aphiwe started singing along and vibes immediately connected and Sobancane decided to mentor him in music.

Here is how it all unfolded, last year the two artists recorded a 1 minute snippet singing a song and sent it to a poet based in South Africa called Thabo who then forwarded it to his friend Handy Sibanda creating a connection which was then followed up with a voice-note from Sobancane.

In the voice note the uncle started with the following message:

“Hie Im looking for someone who can assist Aphiwe to record music and grow in the music industry because I have a strong belief and a vision that he is destined for this and will go far. I cant sleep because of this…the young man is very talented. Some one out there please help”

That voice message was then followed-up by an unplugged version of their song Inhliziyo Yami which Handy Sibanda immediately fell in love with and the next day he drove to the boy’s school…waited for him to knock off and drove with him to his homestead deep in the rural areas of Zimnyama.

Sibanda met with the boy’s uncle Sobancane who reiterated his message.

I asked them if we can record a video of them singing. Posted it on Facebook and it immediately went viral.

Handy Sibanda

The video had reached over 90K views on Facebook and earGROUND picked up the footage and re-shared it attracting even more views online and a snippet from the official video has already been viewed by 114K people.

A lady based in the UK called Muziyokuthula Moyo decided to take it upon herself to help them with recording fees which has seen them record three songs now and one music video which was done by Godwin Ndlovu and has now gained over 10k views on Youtube.

I wish to collaborate with Andrea the Vocalist.

Aphiwe

The team working with the boy and his uncle are grateful for the support and they hope to gain more exposure and possibly get a chance to do live performances.

I strongly believe the duo will go far musically as they offer something refreshing to the Zimbabwean market in the form of Maskandi music. The amount of talent is overwhelmingly compelling.