Nando’s Music Exchange has returned for its third year of cultural collaborations and musical mentorship!
All about nurturing global talent and bringing people together, this year we opened up the programme to music students from around the world - 25 to be exact, from the UK, South Africa and Australia. We gave them the chance to work with and learn from some of the world’s freshest musicians already making waves in their respective music scenes
UK superstar Ella Eyre, South African hip-hop diva Dope St. Jude and Australian MC Urthboy joined forces at our studios in The Roundhouse, Camden to guide the students through a 2-day music workshop. The students started out strangers and, after working up some musical magic with their mentors, ended up in tightknit crews who’d created an original song from scratch!
“Writing’s a bit like speed dating: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” Ella Eyre said before meeting her team. Luckily, the sparks flew! In fact BBC Radio 1Xtra presenter and workshop panel host Sian Anderson was so blown away by the songs our groups wrote, she’s decided to surprise her favourite crew and play their track live on her 1Xtra show!
The teams ended their time together with an exclusive talk from our panel of industry experts about breaking into the music industry. Radio 1Xtra’s Sian, Outlook festival founder Johnny Scratchley, GRM Daily’s Elle SM, as well as mentors Dope St. Jude and Urthboy got together to discuss musical collaboration, growing an international fan base and the importance of building global relationships with artists, producers and media outlets when searching for that big break!
Want to hear what they created? Check out the tracks created by our students during the two-day workshop here!
With stage one of their music industry breakthrough complete – we can’t wait to see what’s next in store for them!