KNYSNA NEWS – Courtesy of a faith-based community organisation, a select group of local youths are raring to go for the upcoming CX Got Talent finals on Youth Day, 16 June.

Back To Basics Musiq, a Christian-based community organisation for local youths, was started in 2018. 

"Our main objective is to give the youth of our community an alternative other than, what seems to be the daily norm, drugs, alcohol and gang violence," says founder Jacelyn October. 

"We use music as a tool to try and reach this objective. We are a group of young individuals who want to make a change in the lives of others using something familiar to us, music."

Back to Basics is spearheading the talent competition.

In 2019 the group held their first open-air show. At that year's event they welcomed kids from the community to perform and decided that they wanted to create a platform for young talent. 

"Then we were hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and couldn't host any events. This year we, with Changes of Knysna, a women's community group, decided to host a talent competition," October explains. "We held auditions on 20 and 27 March at the Assemblies of God Church, on 17 April at the Grace Community Church at Lamco, on 24 April at Revival Worship Ministries in Oupad, and on 1 May at the Solid Rock Church in Concordia."

The semi-finals were hosted on 15 May at the Assemblies of God Church in Hornlee, and the grand finale is set for 16 June at the Hornlee Civic Centre.

"Our vision for this competition is to make it a yearly initiative and bigger. We would like to involve more small communities and reach more people," says October.

Prizes for contestants include a song recording with local artist Ace McLean, a scholarship at Pro Academy and golden tickets to the Ikamva Arts Festival final. Performing at this event will be Ace McLean, ChètheMuse, Dope Gang, Kyleo from the West and more.

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