The Musical Brotherhood of The Joy
A guest performance during Doja Cat’s Coachella set introduced more people to The Joy’s acapella sound. OkayAfrica speaks to the group about their upcoming self-titled full length album.
The Joy was founded after the five members, who were part of a gospel choir met early at rehearsals, decided to jam a song together, and the rest is history.
Southern Africa’s vocal tradition is informed by traditional and Western styles that have, through time, come to define a common language that translates across countries. In South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, the vocal traditions of mbube and Isicathamiya have been passed on from one generation to the next, and found expression in whatever the culture of the time entails.
Take, for example, the trailblazing group, Ladysmith Black Mambazo. One would be hard-pressed to find a collective as unique and groundbreaking. Yet both in their locale and in surrounding villages, the Isicathamiya style of singing is as common as the air we breathe. The sound also finds a home in the mines and the hostels of Gauteng, the commercial capital of South Africa, whose history owes as much to dispossession as it does to conquest. The men who lived and worked in the big city found solace in songs that remind them of home. This tradition, of bass, tenor, alto, and lead, is one within which The Joy can be located.
It’s been a wild few years for the acapella quintet whose meteoric rise has left everyone from Jools Holland to Jennifer Hudson and Alicia Keys astounded by their lilting harmonies and soothing melodies. Their 2021 debut EP, Amabutho, introduced the world to a uniquely South African collective that refused to be categorized. “Isencane Lengane” from the EP showcased an ease about them; they took a traditional wedding song and knocked it out the park, injecting an ethereal feel to a well-known tune. “Baba Kulungile,” about forgiveness, is reminiscent of struggle songs.
They followed their debut with the single “Egoli,” about the inevitable journey to Gauteng, the city of gold, where dreams either flourish or perish. It’s a reality that many young people from small villages face: the need to migrate to the big city in pursuit of a better life.
Hammarsdale, an EP released in 2023, is named for their hometown, located some 45 kilometers outside of Durban. “We didn’t really plan to form a group. We were all part of a gospel choir in high school. It happened that one day we met early at rehearsals, and the five of us jammed to a song together. That’s how the group came about,” The Joy tells OkayAfrica in an interview. “Then we started posting videos online. After that, a lot of people who loved our music commented that we bring them joy and heal their souls. That’s how the name came about. We wouldn’t be where we are if it wasn’t for social media.”
“The type of music that we’re doing is influenced by Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s Isicathamiya, and also gospel music. We heard their sound through music platforms and social media, we grew to love what they do, and we created The Joy with that type of sound in mind,” the group says.
But nothing could’ve possibly prepared them for the acclaim that followed their guest feature during Doja Cat’s headline performance at this year’s Coachella. OkayAfrica spoke to the quintet on the day the deluxe version of Doja Cat’s 2023 smash album, Scarlet, was released. They add an otherworldly bounce to the already magnificent “Shutcho,” inject Mzansi soul on the bop “Disrespectful,” and re-configure “Acknowledge Me” with a fresh breath of coastal air.
“Doja Cat sent her team to invite us for the Coachella performance,” says The Joy. “She sent the songs beforehand, and she just told us to do our own thing. We sent the songs back, they liked what they heard, and the trip to the U.S. was arranged. We arrived [and got straight into] rehearsals for the performance. She was really pleased to meet us, and she let us know that we’ve been on her radar since 2018.”
Their forthcoming, self-titled album is testament that the previous attempts have been target practice. They tell OkayAfrica that they started working on the album at the beginning of 2023.
“We wanted to create something that was going to captivate people, so it took a while to work on the songs. We did the whole album in one take, and we worked hard to get it right during rehearsals.”
The Joy is well-prepared for the big league, and they leave none of their influences behind. There’s the established gospel flavor, underpinned by an uncanny ability to remix traditional folk songs, flanked by a firm grounding in Isicathamiya, and completed by a new-age approach to song structure that ensures they are very hip, and very current. The Joy are the now-wave — modern, and very much comfortable in their own skin. Theirs is a sound that harkens to IsiZulu tradition, that gently nods to modern inventions, and that has its bright eyes cast onto the future.
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