Rand Park rocks

Rand Park High School’s talented young learner band Suspended won the St Mary’s School Battle of the Bands for a second time.

Facing tough competition from 20 other competing schools, the youngsters performed an original song called With Me, as well a cover of Alicia Key’s If I Ain’t Got You to claim the title.

Grade 12 learners Timothy Langa and Jason Wilson, and Grade 11 learner Gugu Nyoni make up trio.

Wilson, a young piano virtuoso who started playing the keyboard when he joined the school, was excited to pay his rendition of the famous Key’s song.

He said, “Before auditions, we practised the two songs thoroughly. The audition round was not that intense, but when the finals came, there were a lot of good bands, so the competition was tough.”

Langa loves to play both the guitar and bass guitar, and started to play drums in his church band.

“We play [the song] Tighter so much that I feel preparing for the Battle of the Bands was easy this time around. Our original song was one of the ones that we wrote last year that we did not use, so it was a great experience to play it again,” he said.

Nyoni loves singing and has sung on stage since she was in Grade 6. She has also performed in the school’s major drama production for the past few years. “At the start, I wasn’t that nervous, but when I heard the other schools perform, I knew we had a tough task ahead of us. Taking the final victory was insane and a huge surprise,” she said.