South African Gospel song “Jerusalema” has been officially announced as the most Shazamed song in the world. This announcement was made by the audiovisual identification app, Shazam, on Twitter. The song has been shazamed more than 4.5 million times
Recorded by producer Master KG and featuring vocals by Nomcebo, the hit song was released in December 2019. Though the lyrics talk about the Christian homeland Jerusalem in the South African Zulu language, the song has had global appeal outside the church.
It spurred and led to a global dance challenge, #jerusalemadancechallenge, which had many videos round the world going viral including KKT Productions video which garnered over 24 million views in just 4 months, video of Italian nuns and monks, video of Italian dance club, video of Romanian firefighters and more
Various covers performed around the world with different instruments and sung in a variety languages have also been uploaded on YouTube, attracting their own popularity
The song even became larger than life when a remix of the song was done with Nigerian award winning singer, Burna Boy. KG acknowledged this saying “Most of the time remixes will kill a song but with this one with Burna Boy I think God was on my side because it the remix took the song to another level.”
The remix was released on 19 June 2020, propelling the song onto the US Billboard charts. The song topped the UK Afrobeats Singles Chart on the issue dated August 15, 2020. It has held the number one position for two weeks.
As at he time of writing this article, the official video has been viewed over 145 million times.
Master KG, whose real name is Kgaogelo Moagi, sits on top of the world as one of the most decorated musicians of his generation as a recipient of the coveted continental and African diaspora Afrima 2018 Award for Best Electro and Dance; Afrimma 2019 Award for Best Male Southern Africa; SABC Summer Song 2018 for Skeleton Move; and the Limpopo Music Award for Best House Single for Skeleton Move.
Nomcebo Zikode, born in 1994, is a South African songwriter, performer, and singer.
