Sho Madjozi opens up about her desire to start a music academy in her village

Johannesburg – While attending the launch of the Bridges Music Academy on Thursday in the Western Cape, rapper Sho Madjozi opened up about her own desire to start a similar project in her village in Limpopo. 

Participating in a casual discussion at the academy, the John Cenahitmaker spoke openly about her wish to establish a programme in Shirley, where she is from, that will equip community members with the skills needed to get started in the entertainment industry.

Speaking to Channel24 after the event, she explained where this desire came from. 

"Every time something great happens in my career you have all people like the Minister of Arts and Culture and the minister of this and that saying, 'now you've proved that it's possible for a girl from Shirley Village to make it here'. And I'm like, 'no, I haven't'. It's happened to me by sheer luck, chance, positioning and the opportunities that I've been able to have and it's not possible for someone sitting in my village at the moment."

The rapper believes it's time to "stop celebrating the one person that manages to beat all the odds and make it."

She adds: "Let us tackle those odds." 

Her way of doing so would be through a skills programme. "I just decided that there has to be some kind of facility in my village that will teach people stuff about the entertainment industry, train them in technical skills and also give them some kind of experience."

While works on making this dream a reality, Sho Madjozi plans to give back in another way – by sponsoring a student to attend the Bridges Music Academy.

The rapper enquired about how she could get involved, saying that she would be interested in assisting a female student who is interested in production. 

"I want to know how to potentially sponsor a student to come here," she asked during the Q&A portion of the academy's launch. 

She went on to say: "A student I would want to sponsor would hopefully be a young woman who is interested in learning technical production skills, because I don't see enough of that in young women. I want to hire women engineers, I want to hire women producers, but that's hard to do because women often don't have those technical skills."