School’s war cry gets Drake’s attention

Durban — Northwood School’s war cry leader was at a loss for words on learning that American superstar rapper Drake had shared the school's war cry on his Instagram story to his 145 million followers.

The renowned musician shared the school’s unique rendition of his song Nonstop after the Durban North school posted a clip on the social media site.

Nigel Kambasha, the school's war cry leader and a Grade 12 pupil, said he was shocked when he saw Drake’s Instagram story.

“I was wowed.

“This is amazing. When I got to the school in Grade 8 it was my goal to become the war cry leader. And to have Drake hear our war cry and follow my school is unbelievable.

“It was my idea to use Drake’s song Nonstop. I changed the lyrics to have more of a Northwood sentiment, but used the same beat and tempo.

“When we posted some of our war cry practices, we tagged Drake in the comments on Instagram hoping he would see it. And to our shock and surprise he did,” said Kambasha.

Gina Klingbeil, the school’s social media manager, said when she posted a clip on Instagram of the school’s rendition of Drake’s Nonstop, the boys began tagging Drake on the video.

“Nobody thought that Drake would see the video, let alone share it on his official Instagram story. He then started following the school’s Instagram page.

“We sent him a direct message to say thank you for the following and if you ever are in South Africa you know where to find us. He then sent back a fire emoji,” said Klingbeil.

She said the past few weeks had seen two of their Northwood war cry videos go viral on Instagram and TikTok, with combined views of more than 30million, and still climbing.

“The 20000-plus comments on the two videos (on Instagram and TikTok) have been overwhelmingly positive, almost all celebrating and commenting on our diversity and the clear spirit and passion our boys have.

“None of this would have been possible without war cry leader Nigel Kambasha and his war cry team leaders, our prefects and Mrs Torgious, the talented war cry band, our tech and press team, and of course our amazing Squires and Knights on the stands giving it their all.

“What most don’t realise is that the videos were simply captured on regular Thursday mornings as part of war cry practice – unedited and unstaged, a wonderfully authentic reflection of who we are,” she said.

Sunday Tribune