I've waited a very long time to get this on YouTube. I'm sure a lot of people has. And judging by the reaction we got yesterday on social media and on the internet, whatever we did worked really well.

A beautiful documentary on the uplifting power of music — the South African Music Outreach Project, brainchild of former...

Posted by NWU School of Music & Conservatory on Tuesday, February 9, 2016

This project dates from 2012. Initially it was only available on DVD for fundraising purposes and even passed over the desks of a few broadcasters. The SA Music Outreach Project was founded by Prof Karendra Devroop in 2007 and like many of the student instructors I remember being a bit sceptical over the outcome when I first started working on the project. But my doubts disappeared quicker than the bad cold I had over the five days I spent filming the kids' progress. The project was voiced by Yolanda Maartens Brown, and then passed through the expert hands of Pieter de Bruin at Artema Recording Studio in Potchefstroom for final mix.

I've worked on a lot of truly great and exciting projects the past six years, but this project remains really special to me to this day. 



To a large extent it changed the way I saw what I was doing for a living by making me realise how important it is to give back, and what a powerful medium video is to raise awareness for a good cause. Thanks to the experience I had working on this, I got involved in other projects of the same kind.


The movie speaks for itself. To quote Karendra: "If you give back, you will always receive more".