Melanie Steenkamp

Melanie Steenkamp (born 24 April 1985) is a singer from South Africa. Quotes It's Mel-ah-nie. I was pretty much brought up as a Christian all my life. I've gone to church since I was really, really small. When I was about five years old, I started singing secular music. I started singing cabaret stuff and doing concerts for old-age homes and things like that. When I got a little bit older, when I was about 11, I started recording my first album. It was a mixture of Afrikaans and English. That was a secular album and EMI in South Africa distributed it. With my second album, that was a Christian one and that's when I started doing Christian music, at the age of 13. Since then I've just been singing full-on Christian music. That's what is my real passion. I've done six albums to date. My mum dressed me up a lot. Which was really bad! She would dress me in big dresses, which is totally not me! So when I look back at the videos.! She would dress me, let's say a 'cowboy girl' just to fit the titles of my tracks. But right now, I get to wear my own clothes and make my own decisions, which is really cool. I'd got serious about the whole fact that I'm singing to youth. I guess people could relate to me more because I was their age. Growing up, I had the Lord with me all the time and I had the most brilliant life. The Lord just showed me from a really young age what I was supposed to do and what my purpose was. This was really just such an awesome experience for me because most of my friends would say, 'I have no idea what the Lord wants for my life,' which is really sad. They still have to seek their purpose in life and the Lord gave me that from a really young age. So I'm just blessed by that. When I go out on stage, the main thing I tell people is, 'Listen, this is what the Lord has done for my life and he can do exactly the same for you. I'm no special person or anything like that. If you're just saying, "Lord here I am, I'm available," then the Lord can use you exactly the same way. I was 18 at that stage and I was thinking 'Lord, please don't give me this because I'm 18 and I cannot build a church!' Just after that the Lord gave me a Scripture, Isaiah 49. It just says that he would send me out to the ends of the earth and I was to be open to what God wants me to do. In July I went to the USA for a whole month touring. I raised enough money to build the church and as we speak, the building programme has begun! I listen to a lot of radio and listen to the new styles. Most of the time I'll write songs or get songs written in that style. So I know that when the music comes out people will say, 'Gee, I like that music! Even though it's Christian music.' So my style is really something that I can minister with and I can have fun with and people can interact with me in the things that I do. That's pretty much what my live ministry is all about; interacting with my crowd. I think because I do a lot of interaction with my audience, they can just really enjoy the music. Even if it does go out of fashion, there's always a new style, a new way that I can get them to listen to the message. It's really always just a great way of getting the message out there so that they can relate to it. Melanie: South African pop singer with a heart for ministry, January 18 2005 Category:Singers Category:1985 births Category:1980s Category:Artists from South Africa