Mapara A Jazz Reveal How Much They Used To Get Paid Before Fame. It has been a long time coming for Pretoria, Mamelodi (Pheli) duo Mano Nephawe and Leornard Malatji who, are now known to Mzansi as Mapara A Jazz hitmakers of “John Vuli Gate”. Before the song’s explosion and prior to the spread of its dance across the country, Mapara A Jazz was just a group that was popular only in Pretoria.
Now that not only Pitori knows them, they are looking forward to making it big. To those who are waiting to make a hit, the say: “Keep on keeping on. Don’t give up because if you do give up you will not get what you want. You need to have patience and you need to love it even if you are not making money. Life in the studio is beautiful. We have survived all these years with the little we have made from taverns, parties in tents, where we get R1000 R2000 or R3000 at most to perform or when we host gigs entrance being R10 or R20.”
The hit song ‘John Vuli Gate’ is one of the biggest singles to come out of the year 2020. So far, it has amassed over 8 million video views on YouTube. The song exploded on social media after a video of three friends dressed in black clothes were dancing to the song at a petrol station. The ‘John Vuligate Challenge’ spread on social media, further increasing the popularity of the song and landing it on the charts. “Honestly speaking we told ourselves that our time will come, that is why we never gave up. But then because it has been so long waiting for this, we are like, WOW!,” they added.
