South Africa is filled with many different cultural backgrounds, each with its own individual history behind it that runs hundreds of years along the timeline. To each culture, there is a language, a form of communication amongst people. But due to the large quantity of cultures and languages, not everyone can interact with each other using their voice. That's were music comes in. Music is an internationally spoken language understood by everyone no matter what their background may be. Seeing as I'm from South Africa (for those of you that didn't already know) I'm going to focus particularly on South African musicians.

Okay, so South Africa may not be very well known for its contribution to Hollywood and internationally famous people, but unbeknownst to many, there are some very famous international artists that come from South Africa and not many people know it. Take Abdullah Ibrahim for instance. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1934. He started singing professionally in 1941. He went on to become one of the world's most famous jazz musicians, mixing traditional African music, religious music and jazz to create a winning remedy for success and big bucks.

Then there are people like Johnny Clegg who were born outside of Africa but spent their entire lives in Africa. Johnny Clegg was born on the 7th of June 1953 in Rochedale, just outside Manchester, United Kingdom. He moved to Zimbabwe when he was just 2 years old. In 1969 at the age of 16 he joined Sipho Mchunu and started a very internationally famous group. He too achieved great success and money.

Though most of these people had to fight their hardest to accomplish their life long dreams of stardom, there are just those lucky handful of people that are given the opportunities like we're given a bed to sleep in. Take Heinz Winckler for example. He was just an ordinary 25 year-old guy that lived in a richer area and attended a university called Stellenbosch University for Afrikaans speakers. He was studying law and occasionally wrote and sang the odd song on his guitar in his room. Now his an international icon, all in the space of about 6 months, though it took him about 2 minutes to achieve fame. Heinz entered the South African version of Pop Idols and was a firm favorite right from the start, and he went on to win the majority of votes he received (that's including my 5 votes of course). His first debut single titled Once In A Lifetime was a South African hit and broke many of South Africas music records. He then went on to make his debut album titled One Step Closer, another record breaker and an instant success.All this to a guy that just happened to be at the right place at the right time.

There are also those bands that try to stick out do to their very "creative" names. There are names like Semi-Sane, Mean Mr Mustard, Watershed, Afro Z and more. Afro Z were the group made up by the rejects in the South African Pop Stars Show. Not surprisingly they have only had 2 or 3 hits so far. The actual winners, called 101, have had quite good success with their debut single, but it really isn't something that will stay for long.

So as you now see, South Africa is not just the land of African drums and tribal dances (which actually never happens in the South of Africa were the cities are. I have no idea where some people get these ideas from); it has actual talent and aspiring groups of people like you and I, all gifted with a certain craft and doing the best that they can to follow in the footsteps of those South Africans that made it big. Remember: Words speak to the group's mind; music speaks to the individual's soul.