Fresh, melodic pop music from South Africa with strong, heartfelt lyrics, and a theatrical edge.

13 MP3 Songs
POP: Piano, WORLD: Western European



Details:
Philip de Villiers is an award-winning singer-songwriter from Cape Town, South Africa. His music career began when he won the National Ithuba Songwriting Competition at the age of 16, in 1992. In his school holidays, he was earning pocket money by busking with a piano accordion in the streets of Cape Town. Philip took the prize money (10 000 ZAR), and travelled abroad for 3 months to Europe and the USA, playing his music on the streets of London, New Orleans and New York. On his return, he got the lead role in his high schoolâs musical âJoseph and the amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,â by accident. He didnât plan to even audition: âA friend of mine was too nervous to audition alone, and I offered to sing the duet âAll I ask of youâ with her. I got a call-back, and was offered the lead role.â Up until this point, Philip wasnât very confident about his singing. â My best friend always said I had this âfunny wobbleâ in my voice, and my mother wanted me to become a lawyer, so she also dissuaded me to choose singing as a career.â

But Philip followed his heart, and auditioned to study music at a tertiary level at the Pretoria Technikon Music Department, the equivalent of the Berkley College of Music in Boston. His hopes were shattered when his application was turned down. Since Philip had no formal training, he had very little knowledge of music theory. He embarked on a working holiday in London, where he worked as a night guard, and taught himself music theory with books and a toy keyboard at night. He applied again, and was successful.

In 2002, he won an award from a national cultural organisation, the ATKV, for a cross-over style song in Afrikaans, âVeel te redde,â with tolerance as its theme. (Afrikaans is a language similar to Dutch, spoken by 16 million people in South Africa.) A strange coincidence happened on the night of receiving the award: a pregnant woman whoâs water has already broken, knocked at the house in Cape Town where he was staying. Since the ambulance took too long to arrive, he bravely delivered the baby, receiving instructions from the paramedics over his cellphone. The media got hold of the story, and it made front page news in all the major newspapers. The photograph won the photographer, Esa Alexander, the Vodacom Press Photographer of the Year award. The song was successfully playlisted on a number of South African radio stations, and a video was filmed for satellite TV. Drum Magazine turned the story into an anti-rape and anti-women abuse feature. Philip said in the article that âmen who witness a birth first-hand will change their whole attitude towards women, and the incidence of women abuse and rape will decrease.â

In 2003, a series of tragedies occurred in Philipâs family. Six members died, among them his beloved grandmother Mossie in May 2003, and his father Pieter, in a horrific car accident in July. Philip was devastated. He lost some of the sensation on the right side of his body due to the trauma. Through this emotional turmoil his strongest material was born: âJyâs nie rêrig weg nieâ (which he wrote for his grandmother) and âEk hoor jouâ (for his father). These two songs have become his big radio hits in South Africa, being played daily on more than 30 stations.

The album, âEk hoor jouâ (âI hear youâ) has received excellent reviews:

"Having never known of Philip de Villiers, I was pleasantly surprised at his beautiful voice. Even though most of this CD is sung in Afrikaans(a language that is potentially most poetic and expressive) I could hear the journey this young man has travelled in his sensitive intonations. Another shining star in the making from South Africa, something we can be proud of. He oozes charm and musical sensitivity. I will definitely listen to his CD on a regular basis." - Silke Erasmus, Odyssey

Although eight of the tracks on this album is in his mother tongue, Afrikaans, the critics have praised him more for the English gems, like âFrailâ and âSweet Aneen.â