The Culture Corner: Enter Soweto Gospel Choir's 'House of Worship'

XPN | By John Morrison,

Published September 10, 2024 at 3:07 PM EDT

Soweto Gospel Choir and Groove Terminator's History of House — Soweto Gospel Choir and Groove Terminator's *History of House*

Getting together to experience music can feel transcendent, whether you're raising your voice in song at your place of worship or you're dancing all night long at the club. With History of House, a new release from South Africa's Grammy Award-winning Soweto Gospel Choir, you get to do both.

The project sees Soweto Gospel Choir put their own spin on classic club songs, with the help of Australian producer Groove Terminator.

World Cafe correspondent John Morrison gets into what it means hearing dance anthems reinterpreted this way.

"It really shows us just how deeply influential dance music has been and how it has really spread around the world," he says.

In this installment of The Culture Corner, Morrison walks us through the Soweto Gospel Choir's History of House.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

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John Morrison

John Morrison is a writer, DJ, and sample-flipper from Philadelphia. As a writer, his work has appeared in NPR Music, Bandcamp Daily, Jazz Tokyo, Grammy.com, and more. He is also the host of Culture Cypher Radio, a hip-hop radio show on NPR member station WXPN.

Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.

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Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).

See stories by Kimberly Junod