Singer Albert Mazibuko has mixed feelings about the predominantly raunchy rap music on the market. "Sometimes the message is wrong. They have a gift. But I don't think they use it in a proper way, to build a nation." It's a conviction he enforces in his own South African home. If they wanted to enjoy the popular hip-hop tunes coming out of North America, Mazibuko's children had to become adept at improvising life-affirming lyrics to replace the profanities often associated with the genre.

Mazibuko has spent 38 years with the Grammy Award-winning Ladysmith Black Mambazo, an all-male African choir led by Joseph Shabalala, who converted to Christianity in 1975. The group's distinctive a cappella style, an eclectic mix of yips and clicks and whinnies and tongue-trills, soared to global prominence in 1986 after a collaboration with Paul Simon for his chart-topping Graceland album. Their latest CD release, Ilembe: Honouring Shaka Zulu, is a collection of strong moral messages honoring the South African cultural icon.

Now 67, Mazibuko has no difficulty pinpointing the origin of his appreciation for the value of positive music, the same value he is determined to pass along to his children. When he was seven, his cattle-herding duties often saw him making the long trek home in the dark, and it was the talisman provided by his own mother he used to ward off his anxiety. "When we're walking in the dark, we're afraid. So you sing, all the way until home. When you sing, we feel that you are a giant, nothing is going to touch us."