From the archives | Mthandazo Gatya's dream comes true as he preforms with John Legend - 'A world of possibilities'

A dream come true. That's how he described the idea of him performing on the same stage as John Legend. 

And this weekend, it did. 

Rising star Rising star Mthandazo Gatya was called up on the stage by the man himself during a performance and he gave it his all. 

In an interview with Drum just a day before the performance, his team was in talks with John Legend's to talk about a possible collaboration. 

And just a few days later, he not only met him in real life, but got to perform Nervous with the star. 

So how did this happen?

This is what he told Drum in the interview.

They knew they had something big on their hands. 

But he couldn't have foreseen just how far his video would go. When he saw award-winning musician John Legend on social media challenging his fans to duet his new song Nervous, he had to go for it. 

The song is from the singer's new album, Legend. 

Mthandazo Gatya put an African twist to the song and it went viral. So much so that it reached the man himself, John Legend, as South Africans tagged him on the post.

We catch up with Mthandazo. He says he was having a conversation with his manager about his newly released EP, Journey To Infinity, when he bumped into the #OpenVerseChallenge on TikTok.

This was an artist the Senzeni hitmaker looks up to.

“I immediately took a screenshot then sent it to my manger and told my manager that if I can participate in this challenge, it will do wonders for us, and I was just saying it because I was deeply feeling it,” he tells Drum.

“He said man go for it and I called my guy for a studio session and it still early in the morning,” he says while adding that he had to apologise for waking them up that early.

“I was like ‘hey bro this is something that is burning inside and I need to let it all out as in now. I am sorry for the inconvenience but I really need to come to studio now,’ and he said not a problem, anytime just pull through.”

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He recorded the duet the very same morning, he tells us. “Even the energy while in studio, they could feel that this is something big because they could also connect to it and 30 minutes after I posted the video, yoh my phone was bursting with notifications.”

He recalls nodding his head saying, “yeah this is exactly what I thought it would happen,” and he’s taking every minute of the buzz.

“While I was busy excited over the notifications and reactions then boom, John Legend leaves a comment a few hours later, I see Khanyi Mbau also I was like wow.”

In a previous interview with Drum, Mthandazo revealed that his calling is to heal people through music and he understands why his success took time.

Explaining how he came up with the lyrics for the song in that short space of time, he says he was only freestyling what he felt at the moment.

“My process of composing music, I don’t write it, I am a very spiritual being and a spiritual artist, so what I often do is I meditate before working on any song. I want to connect with the beat and feel it so that can I connect with the soul because part of why people can’t hear a thing but can connect is that the song comes directly from the soul and not just something that I had to plan,” he says. 

“It is something that I have to meditate on and just let it come out and that is part of why it is touching to people. I never wrote the song, it was just words that comes from a very spiritual place.”

Mthandazo starts laughing when we ask whether he was in a space of love spiritually during the time he recorded the song.

“You know with me sometimes I sit and listen to the song I made and be like ‘man what was going on’ because I sometimes myself cannot understand but then again remember that I am a spiritual being so it’s something that is inside me talking and delivering the message to someone out there who is going through the same. Like I said my talent goes quite deeper than that.”

The musician clarified to Drum that, “I am not a sangoma. I don’t need to thwasa or do any ceremonies but I have a spiritual calling and that is to help people”.

Mthandeni says his management is reaching out to John Legend's team in hopes that he will consider a collaboration.

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“It has to be a song first before everything else, so my team is still reaching out to him just so we can see if it can be a collaboration or anything else and if does become a collaboration, then it can be in stores and all that,” he says.

“I would be really happy if that happens, it would be a dream come true I mean for someone who has been a fan and supporting John Legend, and then now being featured by him would really mean everything to me.”

Mthandazo’s breakthrough in music came in 2020 when he was about to lose the only place he called home, a shack he had been living in since 2011.

The musician, who was born and raised in KwaMadyarhana in Gasmere, Johannesburg, told Drum at the time that his extended family moved to Cofimvaba in the Eastern Cape, while he stayed in Johannesburg to pursue his dreams.

While catching up with us on how things panned out for him, he says he is driven by faith.

“I feel like if every individual could understand that as a human being you are a spiritual being before you are anything else; you have the ability to see things before they happen and the ability to see through people’s pain, and with me it goes with the saying that you shouldn’t ignore the inner voice in you.”