“Jerusalema” at the top of the MTV Europe Awards

Who hasn’t heard, listened to or danced to the catchy beat of “Jerusalema” this year? With its rhythm, this piece by South African DJ Master KG has brought joy to the gloomy atmosphere of this year marked by the coronavirus health crisis. The award received at the MTV Europe Awards is for the title of African song, but “Jerusalema” is more than that. The song, joyful, inspired by gospel and conceived as a kind of positive prayer, has convinced more than one of the rhythmic and melodic inventiveness which the artists of the continent can conceal. The proof: the song had inspired the “Jerusalema dance challenge”, a kind of competition in which, for months, hundreds of anonymous people all over the world filmed little clips where they danced on the song before sharing them on social networks. Until the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who had proposed to his compatriots to participate on the occasion of a public holiday in September. The African National Congress (ANC), the ruling party in South Africa, greeted the “maestro” on Monday the day after the acceptance of his prize, awarded against the Nigerian heavyweights Burna Boy or Rema, or the Congolese Gaz Mawete .

“Jerusalem,” from memory to memory

“Jerusalema” broke all kinds of records, with the clip surpassing 100 million views on Youtube. It is also one of the most “shazamous” pieces since the invention of the Shazam application, which allows a mobile phone to listen to music and identify the performers. To thank all the fans who made “Jerusalema” a huge success, Master KG posted his speech at the MTV Europe Music Awards on social media. “I now know that I have one of the biggest hits in the world,” he confided earlier this month to AFP, on the sidelines of a concert in Malawi. He added: “But that doesn’t change who I am, how I look at the world, at people. It’s music. Hats off, the artist!