Author: Beth Vale

Nurturing the Night: Reflections on the Berlin NIGHTS Conference and the future of club culture

Over the past few months, a sidewalk in London’s Islington borough has been cloaked in a growing collection of flower bouquets. Passersby solemnly place their offerings at the entrance to a four-story building, opposite Smithfield Meat Market. It’s the site of London’s iconic nightclub, Fabric, which has been closed this year after having its operating license withdrawn.

‘R.I.P. Fabric’, read one of the notes. ‘You’ve gone to join The End, Bogleys, SE1, Turnmills and The Fridge in the big club in the sky. Thank you for all the good times and for the amazing music. P.S. Please don’t become a Tesco [Supermarket] Metro’.

While visiting London this month, I learnt that more than half the city’s nightclubs, and around 40 percent of its music venues, had closed within the past 8 years. A skyrocketing property market, and escalating rents, had resulted in many club owners being bought out by property developers. Compounding this, local councils had been enforcing stringent regulations to limit noise, confine opening hours, and increase security. Meanwhile, shutting down nightclubs had been positioned as the answer to a series of drug-related deaths, including at Fabric. The crack-down on nightclub cultures in London has given rise to a series of fierce contestations around the cultural value of nightlife for artists, partygoers and tourists, and what effects this might have on people’s collective right to the city.

The new urgency around protecting nightclub cultures in Europe is acutely felt in nocturnal hubs like Berlin, a city where night-time socialities are given serious nurturing and attention. At the end of November this year, Berlin played host to the first installment of the NIGHTS conference. Urban planners, artists, DJ’s, festival-planners, club owners, bouncers, sex workers, researchers, music journalists, and drug policy experts gathered to discuss a kaleidoscope of questions related to nocturnal city culture.

Also present at the conference were Night Mayors from across Europe. The Night Mayor initiative began in Amsterdam in 2014 as a strategy to address prevalent nyctaphobia (fear of the night) among public officials and city planners. Too often, night-time in the city is viewed with suspicion and resentment, where darkness is believed to bring with it various pollutions — sex, crime, noise, intoxication and criminality. Night Mayors are intended to be alive to the night, while many of the city’s public officers are fast asleep. In doing so, they connect night businesses, night workers, revelers and residents, with City Hall. The concept has since been taken up in Paris, Toulouse, Zurich, Berlin and London.

Staged at two nightclubs overlooking the River Spree, attendees at the NIGHTS conference explored the social possibilities and challenges of nightclub culture, set to a backdrop of LED lighting. We discussed ableism in nightclubs and the inaccessibility of night venues for those with disabilities. Indeed, inclusivity was a key concern across the three-day conference as speakers explored questions related to the integration of refugee musicians, as well as how to address racism, sexual harassment, homophobia and violence on the dancefloor. Contributors further discussed new technologies of the night: sound, lighting, and virtual reality, as well as their various impacts on the environment.

Those of us in the night-time industry often express the value of nocturnal cultures in Utopian terms. Unsurprisingly, the NIGHTS conference was awash with conversations about night-time as a space of freedom, love, integration, transgression and release. Many spoke about the possibilities of the night for fostering social cohesion and belonging in the city.

But of course, the night is also a source of contestation and conflict. Attendees interrogated norms related to ‘Who gets to have fun?’ For whom is ‘fun’ economically accessible? Who’s ‘fun’ is valued and whose is classed as degenerate? Many discussed the competing claims to the city at night. Is the night a place for work? Leisure? Consumption? Sleep? Which forms of ‘night life’ are desirable and undesirable? While consumers at a nightclub might be one thing, those walking the streets or creating roadside parties are treated quite separately. How can residents and nightclub cultures co-exist? What forms of regulation do we want at night and for whose protection? Many thoughtful discussions were had about ‘harm reduction’ policies that seek to reduce the risks of drug-use by researching which drugs are entering the club scene, offering emergency services to drug users, and increasing awareness about safer drug use practices.

Both Berlin and Johannesburg are cities that have undergone immense social change and upheaval in the past 25 years. As the Berlin Wall came down, clubs sprang up in abandoned buildings and warehouses as young people ‘took back the city’. In Johannesburg, young people’s relationship to the city is also continually in flux as nightclub hubs relocate, and new claims are made to nocturnal spaces. Yet conversations about Johannesburg’s night-time — as a site of artistic expression, economic innovation, social contestation and identity — have yet to truly begin. Our city’s population is younger than that of both London and Berlin. For Johannesburg’s youth, night is not only a function of time, but also of place. The night is a unique place, in which young people predominate, and new forms of social access and exclusion become apparent. More so, young artists, event promoters, DJ’s, musicians, designers and creatives are making and sustaining a vibrant and complex night industry in the city. Perhaps it’s time we take this seriously — as a social, cultural and economic resource. Perhaps it’s time for our own NIGHTS conference.

1 December 2016
“Street Dreams are made of Takkies”: Reflections on the Sneaker Exchange

In February of this year, the State of the Nation address aired on South African television. At the same time, the second season of Ayashisa Amateki launched on SABC 1. Whether as a consequence of our disillusionment with politics or the rise of South African street culture, the show for sneaker-heads attracted more viewers. Our country’s youth — who make up more than 60 percent of the population — care about takkies. While it’s easy to dismiss this footwear fever as a case of rampant materialism, sneaker culture has become embedded in the way that young people seek recognition, status and belonging — an expression of their artistry, their struggle, and their aspirations. It’s no wonder then that the Sneaker Exchange, South Africa’s largest sneaker event, has something to tell us about The State of the Nation.

The JHB Exchange was best viewed ten centimeters off the ground: Lumo Nike Flyknits, Red Octobers, Bape Camo NMD’s, all black Airforce 1’s. While some say fashion trends converge to uniformity, our sneaker game is a kaleidoscope of varied brands, audacious colours, high and low tops, and unique customisation. The Sneaker Exchange crowd laced sneakers around their necks, slung Converse from their belts, and clung to new shoe boxes. Collectors, resellers, retailers and enthusiasts, the city’s biggest sneaker heads were out in force: Tusa of Dip Store, Mkay Frash of Hunting for Kicks, collector Farhan Esat, and Zaid Osman himself, the founder of Sneaker Exchange and Lost Property.

From our richest celebrities and Instagram influencers; to schoolkids and township youth: sneaker culture is alive and kicking in South Africa. YoungstaCPT told us even ‘Bergies have kwaai takkies.’ But while sneakers might appeal to everyone, part of this appeal is in their exclusivity: that rare pare of Airs, the limited edition New Balance. It’s about fitting in, signaling membership to ‘the scene’ and sometimes to your brand of choice. But it’s just as much about standing out in uniquely customized, exclusive releases.

Youngsta unravels the laces between personal narrative and local sneaker culture in his 2016 release ‘Takkies’, the entry single to the HuntingForKicksSteezSession. In it, he speaks of the struggle to ‘make it’, growing up in a crime-ridden neighbourhood, cleaning his kicks with a toothbrush, and the social currency of dressing well: a life told through sneakers.

‘When I was eight

I tried my first pair of Jordans on

As my mom, ‘Can we buy these?’

She said ‘Sorry son, I just can’t afford’

So I hustled the money cos I really wanted to own it

Boys in the hood, they saw me with it

So they broke in the house and they stole it

It was all for the Takkies’ – Youngsta CPT/ Takkies

We have long since looked to rap to tell sole stories. In the chronology of kicks, hip-hop and sneaker culture have had a symbiotic relationship. In 1986, for example, thousands of Run DMC fans sent their shoes to the sky: sneakers hovering over Madison Square Gardens, while the crowd chanted ‘My Adidas’. Since then, we’ve seen Wu Tang Clan Nike’s, ASAP Rocky Adidas, G-Unit sneakers, Jay Z Reeboks, and the Yeezy Boosts. Wearing the same sneakers as your idols, whether musicians or basketball stars, has for decades made young people feel like they were snatching pieces of their success. In this way, kicks can embolden people, sometimes giving even the most marginalized a feeling of access to power.

Now
Me and my Adidas do the illest things.
– “My Adidas,” from Run-DMC’s 1986 album “Raising Hell.”

Consumption, and indeed brands, become one of the ways in which we tell our life narratives, both to ourselves and to others. ‘Street Dreams are made of Takkies’, Youngsta reminds us. The tug for takkies can knot us into relentless and expensive quests for acceptance. But takkies can also be transgressive. They’re prohibited in the corporate workplace, and dispelled from the dress-codes of many clubs and restaurants. The red and white Jordan 1 prototypes were banned by the NBA for being ‘too colourful’. By rocking sneakers, ‘we wear what we like’.

South Africa’s sneaker game is much younger than in The States. It’s taken a while to gain access to the latest merchandise, but the country’s kick craze is on the rise in its two largest metropolises. Cape Town sneaker heads are famous for their big Air Max units, known as Bubbles. In the Cape, streetwear stores like Lost Property and Shelflife have been drivers of the city’s sneaker culture; while in Jozi, Shesha, Dip St. and Anatomy are nuclei for the takkie scene, with Braamfontein serving as a key meeting-point for kids with kicks.

As in The States, South Africa’s dual rise of hip-hop and sneaker culture have been mutually re-enforcing. The intricate webbing between streetwear and the rap game were on full display at the latest JHB Sneaker Exchange. Riky Rick staffed a store selling limited edition Sidlukotini T-shirts, supported by Art Director and style icon Didi Monsta; DJ Speedsta came out with a line of Tees to commemorate his smash-hit single, Mayo; And finally, Anatii launched his Artiifact collection. The afternoon’s soundtrack was hip-hop, featuring performances from Mashabhuqe, Shane Eagle, Nadia Nakai, Nasty C, YoungstaCPT and Ready D. Sneakers have also laced themselves into local lyrical content:

“Man it’s amazing when you from the bottom/ Nike kicks I gotta cop em” – Nadia Nakai/ Money Back

“You fresher than every rapper and every sidekick/ What happened to the Nikes and the pictures you posted of Mikey?” – Cassper Nyovest/ Le Mpitse

“I got my T-shirt and sneakers on/ No-one to mess around with” – A-Reece/ Goodnight

“So grab your Nike’s/ Adjust your eye keys” – AKA/Do it remix

“You come correct/ like a tick/ Nike” – Rouge/Mbongo-Zaka

It’s no wonder that sneakers and artistry so often collide: there’s art in the kick game. “My outfit is Pablo Picasso”, says Youngsta, “I have impeccable dress code”. Locally, we’ve seen artistic collaborations between New Balance and graffiti artist Dr Zulu; as well as Eytys and Ester Mahlangu. While the former created a black and gold trainer inspired by Jozi’s ‘Egoli’, the latter saw Ndebele prints transposed onto Swedish sneaker. We’ve also witnessed exemplary artistry in customization from creatives like Black Faff. At this year’s JHB Sneaker Exchange, illustrator Lazi Greiispaces partnered with Nike Airforce 1 to bring us a live art installation. Weaving patterns of marker pen on takkie leather, the local artist is creating beautiful art-in-motion. At this year’s MTV Africa Music Awards, Caster Semenya donned a pair of his customized kicks — connecting sport, art, sneakers, and music in ways that have become so characteristic of the culture.

These days, Sneaker Exchange attracts more than 2000 impeccably-clad feet through its doors. These numbers are only set to rise as South Africa’s youth continue to vote with their feet.

10 November 2016
Multiplicity on the Dancefloor: nightclubs for the non-binary

One of the defining features of nightclubs is that they are loud and dark: there’s little allowance for speaking. It’s a space where our bodies are especially loaded, in part because they are the primary means by which we signal to, and experience, one another. We dance, we push, we touch, we avoid, we shoot glances across the room. The resulting intimacy is charged with volatility — sometimes experienced as warm and exciting, but always on the cusp of something suffocating or even violent.

Being Pride Week, I was prompted to reflect on some of the ways in which Johannesburg’s night spaces are experienced by queer and/or non-binary bodies. How does cis-hetero-normativity contribute to the contouring of the nocturnal city? To what extent are nightspots designated as ‘gay’ experienced as ‘safe’ by their intended audiences? And how do queer bodies negotiate the layered possibilities and vulnerabilities of the night-time?

One of the very first places I went out after moving to Johannesburg was Liquid Blue, a cocktail lounge in Melville. It remains unclear to me whether Liquid Blue was originally marketed as a gay bar, or whether it has simply been claimed by a queer audience. Either way, the lounge is now a widely celebrated gay night-spot, with a playlist that spans house, kwaito, hip-hop, RnB and pop — designed to keep the dancefloor jumping. My early experience at Liquid Blue made me stunningly optimistic about Johannesburg’s night scene and to this day, it remains the most inclusive club I have visited in the city. No entrance fee, with an audience that is acutely representative of the South African demographic: predominantly black, with white, coloured and Indian partygoers as visible minorities. The dancefloor is an exchange of intimacies that disregards race and gender, and although the crowd is mostly men, young women of any sexuality can feel a precious sense of safety.

Indeed, in my conversations with Johannesburg’s non-binary partygoers, one of the primary debates seemed to be about the place of cis-hetero bodies in queer night-spaces. A few months ago, while chatting to Desire Marea (of FAKA) about partying as a queer, black man, he told me that night-spaces specifically designed for queer audiences are increasingly rare. “Those spaces hardly exist now”, he said. “It’s literally a space that was once a straight club, and now it’s a gay club, and there are still some straight people.” In these spaces that were not designed for queer bodies but in which queer bodies are present, he argues that there is “still that energy and sense of being unwelcome”. It’s “not as safe as a space that is designated especially for you. And we need those spaces. We can’t just integrate. We want to explore ourselves”.

When Desire first moved to Johannesburg from KZN, he began renting an apartment in a lesser-known part of inner-city Jo’burg: run-down buildings, occupied predominantly by young men, many of whom had also migrated from KZN. Early on, he and Fela Gucci (of FAKA) began partying at the neighbourhood tavern. Having spent a lot of time in rural taverns, Desire described this to me as one way of connecting to a particular part of his “black experience”. He and Thato had been in awe of how homo-erotic the tavern was. Young men, many of whom would not have identified as queer outside of that space, were the sole clientele. “They were dancing in ways that would not have been acceptable even at Buffalo Bills”, Desire reflected. It was an intoxicating place, but its permissiveness was also fragile. After one of their friends was assaulted there, they did not go back.

Desire now speaks of his successes and struggles in claiming Braamfontein, as a space in which he, and other queer bodies, can feel welcome. There remains, he tells me, a class gulf between nightspots in Braamfontein and the tavern where he once partied, such that those in the tavern do not have access to places like Great Dane or Kitcheners. To some extent, Braamfontein has become a space in which the ‘alternative body’ is welcomed and celebrated. But Desire argues that there is often only a particular kind of ‘cool’, and a particular kind of ‘gay’ that is desired. He told me a story about a time he wore a dress on a night out and was waiting in the queue for the entrance. Although no one else in the line had been asked for an identity document, he was pressed by the bouncer and subsequently turned away. Those queues, he told me, were so often utterly “dehumanising”.

Part of what Desire is pointing to, in his story about the dress, are particularities about how femme bodies are received in night spaces. He describes this as the “hetero-normativity of gayness” in which “femme bodies are not allowed to express their sexuality in the same way as other gay male bodies”. Of course, club culture that is anti-femme also affects how women experience night-spaces. To this end, the monthly Pussy Party at Kitcheners has sought to create a pro-femme platform that celebrates femme artists and audiences, featuring acts like FAKA, Angel Ho and Dope St Jude, while also pushing back on particular forms of cis-het machismo.

These are instances in which traditionally hetero spaces have opened themselves up to more fluidity. But to what extent are designated ‘queer’ spaces experienced as ‘safe’ by queer bodies? Unsurprisingly, this answer is also not always clear. Many have told me that while these spaces might allow them to feel comfortable in their sexuality, gay clubs that are almost exclusively white provoke other discomforts and other forms of violence. Some described feeling “unacknowledged” which was “disappointing” and “painful”. Reflecting on a night out at a gay night-spot in Illovo, a friend said: “obviously I feel safe there as a queer white man. But it made me feel more uncomfortable than when I was in Kitcheners making out with an ostensibly straight boy because it felt like a church of whiteness”. Despite describing Illovo as “super white”, those I spoke to also recognised it as the heart of the post-Pride party.

And of course, the city’s designated ‘gay clubs’ are not only racialised, but also classed. In Maboneng, a new nightclub, Industry, has been opened with the aim of catering to “upwardly mobile gay men and women”. It is a very chic spot, playing cutting edge electronic music, with patrons who look as though they just stepped out the pages of a high fashion magazine. It’s in image that is at-once immensely appealing to some, and deeply alienating to others. And indeed, this is likely to be true of many night-spots in the city.

Much of the discourse on non-binary nightlife in Johannesburg is about the experiences of queer men, with very little attention given to queer women. In reflecting on her experiences in the nocturnal city, a friend of mine said this: “one of my major concerns when visiting night spots is about the level of unwanted attention and uncalled for touching. For me, not all queer safe spaces feel safe, in the same way that not all heterosexual spaces do. One of my most unpleasant memories at a particular gay bar was being accosted by the bouncers not only outside, but also while waiting for drinks. So one person’s safe space is not necessarily another’s no matter how queer safe they claim to be.” Perhaps unexpectedly, she said that one of her favourite spaces to go at night was the strip club, where the music was good, men did not bother you, and all the attention was on the working women.

Over the past few days that I’ve spent talking and reflecting about nightlife outside the bounds of cis-heteronormativity, the term ‘non-binary’ has exploded in its meaning. Not only do we need to think about how our night-spaces might welcome or militate against gender non-binary audiences. But we might also think about the ways in which our identities are always more than one thing at once. We might be both woman and queer and black; straight, white and disabled; rural and gay man; hip-hop head and crowd-phobic; and so the list goes on. All of these identities factor in the ways that we experience space. The question of queer-safe nightclubs seems then to point to this wider question: how might we craft night spaces that take our multiplicity as their basis?

“There’s just a lot more in Jo’burg”, Desire reflects. “There’s a lot more people dealing with energies, dealing with trauma. There’s a lot more conflict. It’s just a thing about the city. The conflict is a thing that’s in the air. But also a unity that’s very hard to reach. You have to delve to the deepest darkest places to try and find shared experience. Nightlife for us is not just going out. Nightlife is also sharing a bed with someone. Essentially nightlife is living the way you want to exist and it’s transcending the experience you have during the day. It’s like you’re emancipating yourself. It’s resistance”.

1 November 2016
Beach in the City: the art of spatial play and summer nostalgia

On Saturday October 8, I tasted the first offerings of Summer 2016: sand between my toes, the smell of sunscreen in the breeze, a crowd of floral dresses interspersed with multi-coloured umbrellas, beach balls bobbing overhead, and in the periphery a group of friends dancing around a volleyball net. But rather than an ocean skyline, my horizon was capped with concrete high-rises and billboard advertising. This was an oasis transposed into Mary Fitzgerald square. The urban beach party had been conjured by event promoters, Until Until: expert illusionists who regularly transform inner-city spaces into sites of play pilgrimage. “Beach Party was very much in line with the kind of parties we throw already”, they told me. “It’s something experiential and a bit out of the norm.” This time, Until Until had teamed up with Virgin Mobile and Superbalist’s In the City to deliver seven hours of sonic summer heat.

Pouring sand onto Newtown concrete, the fantasy was brought to life. “It had to look like a beach. That was a very big point of what we were trying to achieve. In terms of social media, we ran the ‘wish you were here’ postcard campaign”: the resonance of holiday souvenirs sent back to friends and family. Until Until hoped to transport its audience to a place of paradoxical juxtaposition — the feeling of being away whilst at home; of being able to step into another world, made sweeter by the ability to glance back at the old one. “We played on the contrast of being in the city versus being on the beach. So if you saw some of the marketing visuals, you had drone images of girls laying on the beach in their bikinis, and as the drone pans away you realise you’re in the middle of Johannesburg”.

For all the seaside-surrealism of that Saturday, there remained a tangible familiarity. Weaving through the sand were threads of a well-known practice: journeying to the beach to signal the year drawing to a close. So, in addition to offering an uncanny spatial illusion, Beach Party also served as an elusion to other times and places, within our collective and personal stories. Indeed, beaches carry weighty significance in the history of South African play politics. There was a time, in our not so distant past, that beaches were racially segregated. Fierce attachments to beaches have catalyzed racist hate-speech and defiant rebellion. While the beach-going, even in ‘post-apartheid’ South Africa, has all-too-often remained a white phenomenon, the closing of each year is defined by the annual ritual of thousands of black families travelling to spend their day in the salt and sun. This is summer’s definitive act of socio-spatial transgression.

For some, the beach is that precious family treat afforded by a Christmas bonus. For others, it is a celebration welcoming loved-one’s home from a long time away. And for others still, it is a site of religious and mystical power. The beach is not only a place in which the socio-economically marginalized occasionally claim access to sites of play, it is also a source of reprieve for many who spend their year grinding in urban offices. For people across demographics then, the simple act of a day on the beach is charged with history and meaning. For many, it is a source of nostalgia and childlike escapism. That’s why, when Shekhinah ascended Until Until’s Beach Party stage, her lyrics resonated:

‘Let’s take it back to the beach

Where we were young and carefree

This is how it should be

Said the city don’t feel me’

Also on the line-up were DJ’s Capital, PH and Tira, as well as Atjazz, Julian Gomez, Melo B Jones, Stilo Magolide and AKA. Ricky Rick’s performance culminated in a spectacular stage dive, which saw the artist plunge into a crowd of drenched fans. It was the best of South Africa’s house, hip-hop and urban repertoire — drawing the crowd-tide in.

At about 7pm, the rain descended unabated from the sky. Water was added to sand and sweat, engulfing the crowd in all the associations of ‘the beach’. Some took short breaks, huddled under tents and umbrellas, encountering strangers. The Until Until crew, many dressed as lifeguards, moved to rescue the hype when the crowd were drowning. But for the most part, partygoers relished their rain dance, finding solidarity in the drenched dancefloor and their muddy shoes. “I think it’s the first time maybe in the history of parties when you’re getting reviews like ‘the rain made it better’. You could see it in their faces: the energy’s there, they’ve been there a few hours now, they’re still waiting for their favourite song, [they aren’t going anywhere] …”

A testament to any good music festival is the willingness of the audience to brave the elements together — to give it all to the groove. Beach Partygoers burned through the rain because they were committed to this newly-created place; to the spectacle of sound, sand, and pouring water; and to commemorating a long-standing summer ritual.

24 October 2016
Seismographic Sounds: musical fragments of a world-in-the-making

More music is being produced today than ever before. Cheaper software and production costs; the ferocious circulation of sound and imagery on social media; and increasing online access to a kaleidoscope of spaces, politics, and texts from across the world, have all contributed to this cultural revolution. “Music”, ethnomusicologist Thomas Burkhalter tells us, “is changing on every level — in its production, financing, promotion, distribution, and even its shapes and formats”. This means that those of us who engage with music, whether as artists, bloggers, journalists, or academics, need new ways of thinking and speaking about current sound.

For some, the ever-escalating numbers of bedroom producers and sound archivists, are testament to sinking standards in contemporary music. There is a regularly-repeated refrain that the music of today can never compete with the always-richer, always-more-authentic sounds of the generations preceding us. This is what makes Seismographic Sounds — Visions of a New World such an important book: it takes seriously the products and producers of contemporary music culture. Not only does the book seek to engage with an immense prism of new music production, it also treats these splintered sound bytes as social mirrors —refracted shards of our contemporary humanity. “Music and video clips”, it tells us, “are the seismographs of today. Overall these tracks, songs, compositions and musical clips express what is thinkable and doable. They are direct, urgent, passionate, strong, yet fragile visions of a new world”.

Thursday 6^th of October marked the Johannesburg launch of Seismographic Sounds. The book, edited by Thomas Burkhalter, Theresa Beyer and Hannes Liechti, is a project of the Norient collective — a network dedicated to exploring, engaging, and critiquing emerging music and media culture from around the world. In order to compile Seismographic Sounds, 250 scholars, journalists, bloggers and musicians from 50 countries presented and discussed an ocean of contemporary artistic expressions. The sounds and snippets presented in the book have often been produced in small makeshift studios from Cape Town, to Helsinki, Jakarta to La Paz. The book deliberately explores new material produced within the last two years, thereby urging writers to make sense of a world in-the-making, one which often transgresses musical canons. In selecting works to engage, the editors have focused on popular music and experimental niche music scenes, giving special attention to the sonic inventiveness of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

In a world where internet access, travel, conflict and immigration have given way to increasingly permeable borders, musicians in this book are engaging new questions of place and identity. Their work reflects a “changing geography of multi-layered modernities, far beyond old ideas of North versus South, West versus East”. This is the music of loneliness in an antisocial world and the volatile search for attachment. It is the rendering of old and new cultural stereotypes. It is a sonic defiance of definition, transgressing set confines of sexuality, consumerism, and nation. Where people are multi-spatial and multi-layered, sound offers many an ethereal home. “The sounds of places become more polyphonic. Musicians create their home countries anew: through focus on international niche genres, parodies on exotica, post-digital visions, noisy protests against commercialism and propaganda”.

The Johannesburg launch event for Seismographic Sounds featured live performances from experimental artists, STASH CREW, Fortune Shumba and Hlasko. This was preceded by a panel discussion between editor Thomas Burkhalter, arts journalist Percy Mabandu, and musician/performer Umlilo. Interrupting their scattered, but rich discussions of local music-making were a series of selected video clips from the book. Indeed, contemporary music is marked by growing sensitivity to the visual, the image, and the performance. As Mabandu tells us, “musicians today are as much the artist as they are the artwork”. Our viewing included a snippet from DJ Khoisan, whose work Protein Shake offers a glitchy generational time capsule: a South African coming-of-age story set to 90’s neon fuzz. Next, a spliced film reel from Ghanaian music duo FOKN Bois. The video for BRKN LNGWJZ is an expert compilation of linguistic, sonic, and visual references that explore the contradictory abundance of an African metropolis. Umlilo reflected on an audio-visual offering of his own: Uzabalazo, off the LP Aluta. Through poetic juxtaposition of post-apartheid imagery, the video plays with personal sites of connection and disconnection, whether to a struggle, a place, or a sense of meaning. Blurring the everyday and the surreal, it wrestles with the collision and overflow between parallel social worlds. Indeed, Umlilo is recognised for the arresting fluidity of his artistry — mercurial in his style, genre and gender. While photographing the artist for Seismographic Sounds, Dylan Culhane was urged to reflect on the porousness and heterogeneity of contemporary selfhood: “a sense of multiplicity — of being more than one thing at any given time — is the prevailing narrative of our age”.

As such, Seismographic Sounds is multi-authored, multi-local, multi-media and multi-disciplinary. Like the artists it showcases, the book seeks to capture contemporary modernity in all its multiplicity. And like the artworks, it comes as a beautiful assemblage of unfinished fragments that, when read together, offer new ways of seeing and hearing a world in flux. As Mabandu tells us, “music is often about trying to make cohesive sense of this madness called life”.

Seismographic Sounds is a refreshing work. While so much of today’s music writing renders the personalities, record labels, releases, and endorsements that propel the music industry, far too little writing seeks to understand the sounds of our time. This book, and the creative critical engagements surrounding it, might be one way to spur public discourse about contemporary music. How might we understand music as a source of insight into who we are, who we were, and who we hope to be?

18 October 2016
Hlasko: an artist’s cosmology

As much a cinematographer as a producer, Hlasko’s music spins imagery from sound. “I look at it like films: the setting, the situation, the subject, the object, [all] used in the creation of the song”. For me, the setting for Hlasko’s music is a grey beach, abandoned at dusk. In the distance is a lone figure, her clothes pulled towards the sky by the moaning wind. In intermittent, rhythmic gestures, the figure bows towards the ground, gathering shards of sea glass, driftwood and scattered debris left behind by holidaymakers. In her home, I imagine a ceiling of carefully-sculpted hanging charms — their sea offerings chiming in haunting, metallic symphony.

It’s a scene that encapsulates so much of Hlasko’s artistry and process. The producer and vocalist is himself engaged in forms of hording, experiment, and assemblage. He describes his music as a palimpsest of gathered stories, projections, dreams, and thoughts. As with the construction of hanging charms, creating unity from this haberdashery of sound requires a process of threading and weaving. The thread, in this case, is space and time. “It’s like weaving, ja. How you use time and space in the music. Sometimes it can be very minimal but sound very whole. Sometimes it can be very cluttered, but sound very spacey and minimal”. It’s an art of knowing how to place disparate things, how to stitch them, and how to work with the empty spaces. It’s the process of making chaos poetic. “Since I started producing music, I started understanding a lot of other things that I struggled with. It sort of has a mathematical inclination. I feel I have more logic now. Although I’m quite an irrational person, I think music put me in a state where I understand order …”

Hlasko’s musical assemblages can be likened to that ceiling of suspended sea treasures. His sound is a dreamlike chant, ringing with the rusty textures of motley percussion. His arresting vocals whisper through the production, like a singing wind, or a distant birdsong, or an incantation. Often the call is in Sesotho — the language of his mother’s tongue. There’s a reverberation in the music: a consistent echo that makes the listener feel a sense of solitariness and mysticism. As with an assemblage of hanging charms, the imagery is one of lingering and suspension. It’s no wonder Hlasko’s sound is so evocative of pictures, given his Newtown training as a printmaker.

Hlasko (Neo Mahlasela) grew up in Soweto. He began experimenting with music production in 2010, during his final year of school. He remembers this as a time of abundant creative energy. “I guess I was part of that wave”, he says. The music junkies in his neighbourhood were listening to new electronic sounds from across the globe, including Bjork and Aphex Twin, alongside local nineties Kwaito. “Nineties was a time when I was bombarded by a lot of stuff – entertainment, television. I was very conditioned by whatever was being put out. I still have a very heavy garage influence [in my music], and trip-hop [influence]”.

Hlasko released his first digital EP in 2011 — a Soundcloud collection titled Songs of an Ancient Alien Tribe. In 2013, he participated in the Red Bull Music Academy Bass Camp and, the following year, featured on the Design Indaba Music Circuit. Together with Reunion Island Producer, Labelle, he founded the duo, Kaang. In 2015, they released a self-titled EP under the French label, Eumolpe Records.

Just as Hlasko gathers and re-assembles sound, so too does he build his own instruments. Most recently, he has been building a series of African bows. “I’ve been experimenting with making harp-type ones that you strum.” Hlasko is set to continue this work at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris, where he has been awarded a residency to transform African bows into controllers. “So [like a midi controller] you’re launching other sounds but still you’re using the bow as an interface. There are some physiological things that are attached to playing it”. The project speaks to a broader intuition in Hlasko’s work, which has seen him stitching together old and new. While calling forth seemingly ancient chorus and drum, the artist also transports us to futuristic places of sonic surrealism.

His description of his process draws on a language of meditation and catharsis. “It’s very spontaneous, but the only thing that’s quite consistent is that I prefer to be by myself in most cases.” Creating requires Hlasko to find some sense of stillness. It’s difficult “if there’s a lot of chaos or if there’s a lot happening. I have psychic congestion at times because I feed off a lot of people. I’m inspired by…I just have an urge. It’s purgative”. In this process of purging horded experiences, Hlasko also participates in music-making as a mode of transportation. “I think it’s vivid imagination. I think I’m inspired by the fact that I have a very active imagination.”

In a beautiful meeting of producer and listener, Hlasko’s music draws audiences into a very similar psychic terrain as the one from which the sound itself was produced. Both maker and receiver are bewitched, exalted and immersed.

When I asked what setting he imagined listeners to engage with his music, he said: “I like to imagine it’s an intimate thing, in your room, [and] maybe on your computer like I am”.

A sonic sorcerer, he speaks of music as “a calling” and even a process of divination. Sometimes songs are cast as spells, with the aim, he tells me, of attracting particular things into his life. Other musical offerings are sold as spiritual remedy. His song, In The Sea There is Me, is a soundtrack for that grey, abandoned beach, and is captioned by the following script: “cures hypertension, anal retention [and] pressure headaches. May remedy negative symptoms of tireless dancing”. Like a sonic Sangoma, Hlasko throws his collection of spectral sounds, and then works with both noise and silence, to suture disharmony.

7 October 2016
Tumi Masoko and the Offshoots of Flourishing Local Hip-Hop

Since the late 2000’s, South African hip-hop has seen a meteoric rise. The country’s events calendar is increasingly populated with large-scale hip-hop events; relationships with big brands have strengthened, allowing artists to earn additional income through endorsement deals; 2012 saw the launch of the South African Hip Hop Awards; and mainstream radio has finally bought into a culture that, for decades, remained on the side-lines. After some 25 years, local hip-hop has truly arrived. For the first time, promoters and artists feel as though they are able to survive and thrive off hip-hop. Johannesburg’s nightlife, in particular, has made that possible.

The pre-eminence of local hip-hop has infiltrated street fashion; re-oriented nightclub set lists; and contributed to the rise of new artists and party spaces. Itumeleng Masoko, a young event promoter and hip-hop DJ from Soweto, is one example of this.

I first came across Tumi in an event advertisement for Relevant Thirstdays. Hosted in Soweto, on the last Thursday of every month, the event promised to be a haven for hip-hop heads: an assemblage of hip-hop’s foundational elements — DJ’s, rap battles, b-boys/girls, and an open mic. Staged at the Ko-Phiri Mapetla venue, Thirstdays harkened back to hip-hop’s bloc party origins.

In a place where neighbourhood soundtracks had long been dominated by house music, a new phenomenon was emerging, cultivating hip-hop culture and artistry. Audiences were invited to come and “witness hip-hop culture rise”. The promoters behind the event were a collective called 365 Turn-up Avenue and Tumi, it seemed, was their frontman. Carefully-selected memes formed a significant part of Thirstdays’ advertising: a father and daughter assuming the signature dab, emblazoned with the caption, “Three Thursdays left till the Relevant one”. Another post from a follower showed Cassper Nyovest, AKA and Emtee, each posing with their newly purchased cars. Below, the caption: “SA hip-hop in 2016”. The aspirational rhetoric repeated in regular references to Rick Ross’ ‘We Gon’ Make It’. It was an event concept spawned from the promise of local hip-hop’s new rise.

Tumi and I eventually met one Sunday afternoon on a street corner in Protea Glen. A DJ booth had been erected on the sidewalk. Opposite: a pavement lined with cooler boxes and garden chairs. Stealing shade alongside a brick wall, Tumi told me that, like many others in Soweto, he “grew up listening to house music.” In fact, Tumi had begun his entertainment career as a house DJ, sending mixes to local radio stations. When I asked him about his decision to become a promoter, he told me of one night when he had heard DJ Euphonik advocating on air that anyone who wanted to succeed as a DJ also needed to understand events.

Tumi set to work, hosting his first event when he was in Grade 11. “I didn’t have a clue about events”, he told me, “I learnt on the day.”When I asked how friends and family responded to his new work in the nightlife industry, he responded: “Yoh, my mom used to give me a hard time. She didn’t want me to go out at night, ‘cos [she thought] I’d get stuck into drugs [or] I’ll get killed. But now she can see that I like this. In fact, I don’t like it, I love it, and I’m determined to make it work. People think we’re all about turning up, getting drunk, taking girls home, but it’s more than that.”

For this young Sowetan promoter, it was experimentation with hip-hop that erupted his career as a DJ and promoter. “South African hip-hop started to become amazing”, he remembers. “I tried to mix hip-hop in my bedroom. At first it was kak. I couldn’t feel hip-hop. But I didn’t give up. It started to make sense. When I played it live for the first time, people loved it. It made people give you attention. You see, when it comes to house, everyone plays house. Everyone you meet is a DJ [and] what does he play? What does she play? House.”

House has long-since been South Africa’s musical love. Kwaito, a fusion of house rhythms and rap vocals, flooded airwaves in the 1990’s, and soon became equally infused in the nation’s sonic identity. For decades, hip-hop struggled to compete for audiences, particularly in the country’s townships and rural areas. But the growing inculcation of local languages, locally-inspired content, and kwaito-infused beats has given South Africa’s hip-hop artists new traction, where many had once been accused of American mimicry.

Given hip-hop’s origins among poor and working class communities in America’s inner cities, it is interesting that, in South Africa, there were those who associated the genre with middle-class elitism. Recently, a friend of mine, who parties predominantly in taverns, lamented that Johannesburg’s township parties had become increasingly infiltrated by the ‘Model C dab’. Tumi, however, celebrates the increasing mass appeal of the genre.

“Right now, it’s becoming common [in Soweto]”, Tumi told me. “It’s the trending thing.” Recall also that Soweto has, over the years, given rise to some of the country’s best rap artists: Pro, Pitch Black Afro, Wikid, Zulu Mobb and movements like Slaghuis. More recently, we’ve seen the rise of K.O. “People such as K.O.”, Tumi says, “they’re achieving and inspiring us as youngsters”.

“Before, [it was] commercial house and deep house”, Tumi told me. “Right now you don’t even hear commercial house [at clubs anymore]. They play deep house [and] after that it’s hip-hop. You don’t have a party without hip-hop”. He recalled a time when hip-hop had served as slow preparation for a climactic house set. Today, this ordering had been reversed, with hip-hop at the apex of a night out. In neighbourhoods where house music had once set the sonic tone, Tumi was now referred to as “The Black Coffee of Hip-Hop”.

After his first residency at Malume Lounge, Tumi has since taken up residency at Ko-Phiri Mapetla. 365 Turnup Avenue will be hosting their flagship event, Spring Picnic, on the 29^th of October. You can also check out Tumi’s latest mix below.
[mixcloud https://www.mixcloud.com/TumiMasoko/tumimasoko-hip-hop-kontrol-007sp16tug-promo-mix/ width=100% height=120 hide_cover=1]

3 October 2016
Turn-up Talk Series

The ‘Turn-up Talk Series’ is a collection of discussions in which young Jo’burgers share their nocturnal lives: stories and reflections from the city’s dancefloors. The candid conversations explore nightclubs as stages for young people’s negotiations of identity, belonging and power.

26 September 2016
DJ Diloxclusiv’s Dancefloor Distinction

“Lale ilalilale! Wavuka ekseni awazi ulalephi!” For the past two hours, our cluster of festival-goers had supplanted the Wodumo chant over almost every beat that descended from the decks of that Oppikoppi stage. Somewhere amid the heaving hilltop congregation, a whistle punctuated each off-beat, driving the chant forward. The gqom banger, Wololo, had become so infused in the crowd’s party consciousness that we could string together a remix from any tempo and cadence, pleading for our sonic release. The dancefloor rung with anticipation for what felt like an inescapable necessity: for our sound to drop.

When the minimalist grit of a gqom beat finally aired that night, it felt like deliverance. Like the genre itself, the audience quickly locked into oscillation between tension and euphoria. A glitchy percussive drive encased the Red Bull stage — unapologetically dance music, unapologetically reverberating elokshini. All of this at a historically-white, historically-rock festival.

The first minute of that set was enveloped in a sense of urgency, as we clutched at one another’s shoulders, asking, “Who is this?!” Eventually, the DJ took up the waiting microphone: “Uright?” The beat motored forward through the dust. “Hello Oppi! My name is Diloxclusiv. I’m all the way from Cape Town”. The crowd raised hands in recognition. “Does anyone know gqom music?” A chorus of resounding affirmation responded. “Ok masambe ke! I don’t talk too much”.

And so Diloxclusiv (Vuyisa Genu) began his set, spinning a turn-up tapestry of local house, kwaito and gqom. I later learned that he was a dancer. No wonder, since his music had movement as its impetus, commanding the feet into action. Somewhere in the middle of his set, an interjection of Afropop, as Letta Mbulu’s ‘Amakhamandela (Not Yet Uhuru)’ set a choir of voices, and a swinging national flag, to the sky. A struggle song come to remind us that dancing, particularly in this country, is at-once celebration, protest, mourning, and communion.

Diloxclusiv, as dancer/DJ/artist, speaks from and for his place, as though there were no alternative. He grew up in New Crossroads township, Nyanga, and later moved to Hazeldean in Phillippi. Around 2003, Diloxclusiv started playing paid gigs, initially at house parties and later at larger events. Remembering his very first set, he told me: “that was one of the longest sets I’ve ever played. I played from 4pm till 2pm the following day. Back in my area, there weren’t DJs, plus I had no friends with cars. Music was the only thing that kept us moving. I remember one group of ladies dancing to my old-school songs. They kept saying ‘Repeat DJ!’ I repeated because the crowd loved the music I was playing. So we could play a song 10 times before changing it.”

As a presenter on UCT radio, Diloxclusiv’s popularity soon resulted in him hosting his own show: Kasi Flava, which later became The Blend. With a growing reputation, he has received bookings at some of the Western Cape’s most popular nightclubs and festivals. Cape Town “is one of the most difficult cities to play for”, he told me. DJ’s struggle to get support from the media, and from the Department of Arts and Culture. Township events, he went on to say, are particularly under-supported. Oppikoppi had been a long-term dream for Diloxclusiv, and along with Vic Falls Carnival and Black Coffe Block Party, had been among his favourite performances.

When I asked him about his musical influences, Diloxclusiv described kwaito as his “first love. I still believe kwaito is not dead, just hybernating, soon to come out like a massive butterfly”. Defiantly local in his sonic pallette, he is critical of South African (particularly hip hop) artists that impersenate soundscapes from elsewhere, more appreciative of palpaby local genres like ispaza and motswako. This has been the primary attraction of gqom. “I was one of the first DJs to play gqom in Cape Town”, he said. “The first DJ to play gqom on Vuzu’s Hit Refresh, and the first DJ to play gqom at the 2013 Boiler Room sessions in Amsterdam”. The moment Dilo dropped gqom on that Oppi stage will undoubtedly also be documented as a historic first.

Gqom’s raw minimalism succeeds because it is both ostentatious and lacking in pretention. An unapologetic genre. As an artist, Diloxclusiv is very similarly characterised. He is an unabashed advocate for the music that does not, and could not, exist elsewhere.

13 September 2016
Where the women at? Koolin in the City, the La Femme Remix, and questions of misogyny in hip-hop

My rhymes aint got no gender

I’m killing both like I’m Caitlin

I’m amazin’

I don’t need no validation from crits

Don’t need to make your MC list to let me know I can script

Don’t need a rapper to swallow

To let me know I can spit

— Rouge

The recent cataclysmic rise of South African hip-hop is an indelible cultural phenomenon, premeating not only our airwaves and nightlives, but also how we speak, dress, dance, earn, spend — and (in many ways) think.

Earlier this year DJ Switch called in Shane Eagle, Kwesta, Reason and Proverb to record the much-talked-about single, Now Or Never. The track functioned as a call to reclaim lyricism in the industry — poetics over posing — all centred on the provocation: ‘what happened to rap?’ The official remix featured a 12-man lyrical legion, including PRO, Siya Shezi, Zakwe, Youngsta, and Ginger Trill, sparking web wars over whose bars hit hardest.

But the remix also rang with this deafening question: why was not a single female rapper featured on the track? Later, we learned that Rouge had received the call-up and declined. In an interview with Balcony TV, she explained that being the only female rapper on the track was neither a complement nor an opportunity. ‘I don’t want to be the only female artist’. Rouge wanted audiences to distinguish her verses, not because they were attached to a woman, but because of their incisive lyricism, their cadence, their flow.

Following the original all-male call-out, Switch asked DJ Ms Cosmo to gather a crew of the country’s best female emcees for the LaFemme Remix. Among Cosmo’s fleet of femme foxes: Rouge, Fifi Cooper, Gigi Lamayne, Patti Monroe, MissCelaneous, Miss Supa, Clara T, Phresh Clique, Nelz and BK. At last week’s Koolin in the City, the squad were out in force, celebrating the release, and the culmination of Women’s Month.

‘There are no women in hip-hop they say,’ said the online advertisements, ‘Now ya’ll know’. It resonated with Ntsiki Mazwai’s recent letter to ‘Brothers in SA Hip-Hop’, in which she wrote: ‘you have conveniently told SA that we [female artists] don’t exist’.

Koolout’s femme celebration had inserted itself amidst a wider contemptuous dialogue about the positioning of women emcees in the industry. Banesa, Koolout’s Creative Director, was well aware of the encasing contestations: “[I was asked] “why is it that you [only] have a female line-up when it’s August?” What about all the other nights? So that’s another debate”.

Indeed, encircling all of us on that Troyeville rooftop were brave, beautiful, and brutal utterances about women in hip-hop: the grind and the glory of trying to make it in an industry that, like many others, is permeated by patriarchy, both subtle and overt. ‘Because of the subjugation that happens in all fields’, said Banesa, ‘women are just not very prominent in anything that requires them to use anything other than their womb. And that includes hip-hop.

She adds: ‘because it’s a female line-up, [we assume] this place should be full of women all of a sudden. That’s not how it’s gonna be. That’s not how it’s gonna go down. Chances are it’s gonna be full of guys that wanna see your tits.’

In speaking with femme artists and audiences at Koolout, I was struck not only be the scope and complexity of challenges for women in the industry, but also the fraught tactical decisions women make about how to rise and resist.

Rouge’s internal conflict over the terms of her involvement in Now Or Never is just one example. And she is not the only one to contest the label: ‘female artist’. ‘We’re rappers. We’re artists’, Phresh Clique told me. ‘Don’t put a label on it. You don’t put a label on another artist. If it’s a guy rapper, you don’t say “male rapper”. If I say I’m a female rapper, it’s like I’m doubting myself. Cos I’m like, “feel bad for me guys. I’m a woman”. Ms Cosmo later echoed: ‘I do strongly believe [that you should] look at me as an artist and look at me for my skills’. The real and relentless frustration for these women is that they so rarely get to discuss their actual artistry. Instead, the conversation pivots around ‘what it’s like to be a female in the game’.

And yet, as Jean Grae once said, ‘It’s not possible to discuss women who rap as “just” rappers until or unless people who consume and participate divest from basic patriarchy’.

Each of the women I spoke to was entangled in charged questions about how and when to wear gendered labels.

‘Female hip-hop, I think, does need to be separated’, said Banesa, although she was very aware that many others held a different view. ‘I was having an argument with one of my friends who was like, “there shouldn’t be a separation”. [But] I think the labels are important because it’s the reality of the world we live in. It [women in hip-hop] is a different animal right now’. On her account, women needed their own space, for now, to grow and to build. The quest to be ‘just an artist’ might involve first asserting oneself as an equal. Clarity, for example, dropped these bars for the Koolout audience — a call for a gender-free evaluation of her craft and her impact:

‘I’m trying to stay positive in a world that’s so negative

Masculine/feminine the gender’s irrelevant

As long as I’ve got time, I’ve got minds to change’

Despite attempts to dismantle categories like ‘female artist’, many also offered sharp articulations of the ways in which the industry is gendered.

‘I will always be female whether I like it or not’, Ms Cosmo told me later that evening. ‘I’m not gonna shy away from the fact that women in the industry haven’t been given the opportunities that the guys have. And we have to fight tooth and nail to actually get those opportunities’.

‘This is a man’s world’, Phresh Clique explained. ‘You know when women start getting into any male dominated industry, there’s this thing [of being silenced]. They’re sleeping on us. And the thing is we’re here. They’re just turning a blind eye.’

‘As females, we’re doing something really awesome’ says Ms Cosmo. ‘That’s why I did a song like the La Femme remix to really push the female agenda, to push female artists. Actually to the point where the female remix has been dubbed better than the guy’s remix. A lot of people have said that.

Koolout’s rooftop was steaming with some of the fiercest females in the art world. But existing in that space was not always easy. At a prior Koolout event, I recall a small insurrection in which a group of women disrupted a crewe of male emcee’s chanting the hook: ‘bitch wait outside, let me finish what I’m doing’. Indeed, in discussions of hip-hop and misogyny, it is often lyrical content that attracts the most attention and debate. OG, Miss Supa’s freestyle at the August event took direct aim at references to women as ‘bitches’:

Bark is the meanest

Ask me where the meat is

Grab it and eat it just like a dog would do

It’s probable

Never seen one as hungry as I is

No wonder why you would hurry to call me ‘that bitch’

Woof!

Don’t want you pissing in my territory

Hip-hop is mine

His story to her story

‘There are many people at these hip-hop things who hate me,’ chimed Lady Skollie, a hip-hop head, pioneering visual artist, and fierless gender activist. Through her art and online presence, she has publically critiqued sexual violence and misogyny in the local entertainment industry. In a recent interview for Pap Culture, for example, Lady Skollie attacked common assumptions that famous men ‘make’ the women they sleep with ‘valuable’. ‘Oh yes’, she said, ‘because I was never an individual before you injected all that greatness into me through my vagina’. Even Banesa told me that it has sometimes been assumed that, due to her position at Koolout, she must be sleeping with one of her colleagues.

Incontrovertibly, female emcees receive fewer bookings and fewer opportunities than their male counterparts. ‘Sadly we make the least amount of money when we have a female line-up’, Banesa explained, ‘because they don’t have a big pull’. ‘They see us doing and putting in the work’, said Phresh Clique, ‘but do they trust us enough to own it on stage?’

In a genre where self-assurance is currency, some female emcees have also embodied in their work a powerful collision of ostentation and unashamed vulnerability. It resonated when DJ Muptee dropped these impromptu bars:

I know I want to utter

But when I do I stutter

C-c-can we connect on a conscious level, brother?

Among those female emcees that have grabbed the mic, battled on stages, or claimed their space in the booth, there remain concerns of a double standard. ‘Now that women are gaining entry, of course they need time to hone their craft’, Banesa says. ‘But every time there’s a mess up, [the response is] “you see, that’s why we don’t let you guys in’. Phresh Clique agree: ‘if a guy comes in the game and he’s new, they’re gonna hype him up like “yeah yeah yeah, another boss in the game”. But when a female rapper comes through they look at everything. When the critic comes, it’s heavy with us. They check you from the steez game, to the bars, to the way you’re spitting, to the flow. You literally have to work extra hard in order for them to see. We literally have to rub it in their faces like “yo, we’re here”’.

To add to this, women in hip-hop are not only women. The vast majority are also women of colour. ‘You can’t just say “female hip-hop”’, affirms Banesa. ‘Then you’re talking about black female hip-hop. Then you’re talking about coloured female hip-hop. There’s the girls who grew up on the other side of Sandton, or the Soweto cats’. The casting of hip-hop as particularly violent, misongynist, or brash (over and above any other genre) is arguably located in centuries-long attempts to suppress the voices and artistry of black and brown bodies. Academic, Tricia Rose, has argued that female rappers, most of whom are black, might find it difficult to condemn the misogyny of male emcees because of the need to collectively oppose racism, and to avoid contributing to the notion that black masculinity is “pathological”. ‘You’re exposed to a plethora of issues that need to be dealt with. And it gets a bit overwhelming’, Banesa told me.

Each of the women emcees I spoke to was finding her own way to confront knots of power and privelege, grow the industry, and support women’s work — while aso carving out space to be ‘just an artist’. These complex struggles reverberated through their versus, which echoed defiance, sensuality, audaciousness, rage, humour and poetry. ‘What happened to rap?’ In this case: women happened — are happening. And it’s about time we tell that story.

1 September 2016
Submerge: Sculptural Surrealism and the SKEET Aesthetic

Neoprene, the material of wetsuits, prepares us for submersion. Slipping into neoprene means we are about to sink into an otherworldy place. It’s no wonder then that neoprene has been the signature medium of designer Petro Steyn, the creator of Skeet. The avante-guarde fashion label includes neoprene bunny masks and surrealist dresses that are both ethereal and gritty in their aesthetic. These are clothes of mysticism, excavating the enchanting alter egoes of their wearers, and showcasing their submerged magic.

‘Neoprene so far has become my favourite medium as it is so versatile in form. It has the ability to mould around any shape, keep the form, support it, and to some extent protect it’. The material connotes superhuman shapeshifting, even invincibility. Neoprene’s toughness also resonates with the name, Skeet. ‘It started as a nick-name my sister used to call me. It is an Afrikaans metaphor. It means, ‘Jy is gehart.’ You are strong, tough loved and protected…taking everything in your stride’.

Skeet even describes her process as one of submersion — allowing oneself to be engulfed in the creative process. ‘You have to be flexible in the flow of executing things and not be closed up in a final idea of the thing. Because the only constant thing is change. You have to flow with that idea. Once you flow you realise why and how you’re doing it.’ And as with anyone submerged underwater, sound and speech are secondary for Skeet – she’s an artist that doesn’t talk much. Instead, it’s the underworld aesthetic that she hopes will enchant audiences.

Skeet trained at the Haute Couture School of Fashion Design in Cape Town soon after finishing her tertiary education. ‘The freedom and creativity I experienced kept me happy and content. I grew up with a mother and gran who taught me the basic skills of dressmaking so I had a good understanding of that already’.

She began by designing simple streetwear — a collecting of hoodie-come-scarves and a range of other items under the label Misfit. Skeet also spent a number of years teaching pattern-making. ‘I loved teaching, and have a 3-month pattern-making course I give on demand since the school I studied/taught at closed in 2008’. Around the same time, she launched the label White Noise. This was when Skeet first started working with neoprene, getting cut-offs from surf shops. She also spent some time designing tracksuits and harem pants. This included a comic-colourful collection of tracksuits styled as monsters and octopuses — fantastical creatures of the submerged.

Indeed, Skeet has been able to dive in and out of these two, very different, spaces, below and above the surface: from simple streetwear to outlandish couture. Her more avant-garde pieces have featured on the covers of The Lake and La Petite magazines. ‘The cut/shape of a silhouette will be unique to Skeet, either super simple and basic, or crazy weird and sculptural. As you progress you become aware of things that are continuous throughout the journey. I guess this is how your style or uniqueness becomes more defined. Neoprene has been there from the early start. So you can imagine what the new collection will be made of…’

Skeet’s new project will launch in October this year. Follow $keet on Facebook and on Instagram.

29 August 2016
Of Parties Past: the Cellardoor Archive 2005–2007

‘In two more years, my sweetheart, we will see another view’. Bloc Party lyrics that once punctuated the playlist of a monthly Newtown party called Cellardoor.

The Cellardoor parties ran from 2005 to 2007: a two-year slice in the history of Johannesburg’s nocturnal life. Co-founder, Marc Latilla, holds a catalogue of flyers and photographs from the old parties — a collection of cut-offs and sound bites that document a passing subculture in the city’s after-dark biography. Latilla’s archive speaks to an ephemeral moment, in which a particular time and place — Friday night at the old Horror Café — was captured, monthly, by Cellardoor’s loosely-defined following. Through each iteration, the parties imprinted a particular audio-aesthetic character, spinning all the familiarity and attachment that make times and places meaningful to us.

Cellardoor formed part of an evanescent energy in Newtown’s once-thriving cultural precinct. “Newtown was like a first step back into the city” Marc recalls. “This was before Braamfontein or Maboneng as we know it today”.

Attached to the SAB building on Miriam Makeba St. and decorated with movie memorabilia, was Horror Café, which many posited as the precinct’s epicentre. It was a confluence of artists, musicians, deejays and poets, and a polymorphic genre celebration, playing kwaito, hip-hop, acid house, Afrobeats, and Indie. It was also the original home of Thursday Ragga nights in Newtown, hosted by the incomparable Jah Seed and Admiral.

Chiming with the Horror Café’s cult movie aesthetic, the epochal Cellardoor parties drew thematic inspiration from the psychological horror-science-fiction, Donnie Darko. Co-founders, Marc Latilla and Martin Thomas both loved the film and the soundtrack, which they occasionally spun from the Cellardoor sound system. “It had the right mix of quirkyness, darkness and humour”, Marc says.

Inspired by Donnie Darko’s antihero, the parties were accompanied by a wooden rabbit mascot, dubbed Frank. The name, Cellardoor, was extracted from a scene in the film, where Drew Barrymore’s character, after writing the words ‘Cellar Door’ on a blackboard, turns to Donnie and says, “This famous linguist once said that, of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words in all of history, that ‘cellar door’ is the most beautiful.”

More than a duo of beautifully-strung words, Cellardoor connoted an invitation into a new world, and into the underground. “The Indie & alternative scene has always been underground, so Cellardoor also worked on that level”. The parties mixed new and classic Indie (dating back to the 70s) with alternative music. “We set out to get a good balance between all the new music that was coming out and the stuff we used to dance to at the alternative clubs of old, without becoming a revivalist party. There was always an element of surprise and irreverence in the music choice. We would throw in anything from Wham! to Johnny Cash and tried to stay away from the boring old floorfillers”.

The audience soon came to mirror this generational ecclecticism. “We had girls and guys from the old days”, says Marc, “mixed with the cool kids, all discovering and getting down to what we played”. Eventually, live bands also took to the Cellardoor stage, including acts like Taxi Violence, Wild Eyes and The Dirty Skirts, who were lesser-known at the time. “We would DJ in-between the bands creating a seamless experience. It wasn’t just about watching the bands and then going home”.

Like Donnie Darko, Cellardoor seemed to give rise to a dedicated cult collective, with its own insider-references and artistic identity. The party’s distinctive flyers, for example, were hand-drawn by Marc’s wife, Fiona O’Connor. “If you put all the flyers together from the first to the last, they actually show an intricate underground maze – full of obscure musical references, rabbits and hidden messages”. I’m told that one of the party’s followers collected each and every one of the flyers, which were exhibited as a block at the final party. The now iconic Cellardoor artwork still appears intermittently on social media.

In October 2007, Marc and Martin put on their final co-hosted intallment of Cellardoor. The crowing party doubled as an album launch and featured re-appearances from eight local bands that had graced the Cellardoor stage. This was the second of two Cellardoor albums: the first a collection of international tracks played at the club, and the second a catalogue of all the local bands featured. “Both albums sold out the initial pressings of about 1000 each. It was more for promotion, but people liked the albums”.

Cellardoor was a fleeting subcultural moment — part of a transient time in the city’s history. “Horror Café was a big venue and it became difficult to fill every party. Our attendance numbers were coming down,” Marc remembers. “If I recall, they were also in the process of selling”.

Indeed, the Horror Café, which had run for nine years, would close soon after the Cellardoor parties came to an end. Eventually, other iconic venues like Shivava and Sophiatown would also no longer exist. Many argue that the Junction mall and the influx of new offices suffocated Newtown’s artist precinct. But there are new moments in the making of Newtown’s nocturnal life: And Club, Antidote, Carfax, Shikisha, Gentlemen’s Arthouse, De Peak Bar. Each forms part of a disjointed after-dark cartography — a contested cityscape, discovering itself through jumbled iterations of past and present.

For me, perusing the Cellardoor archive has been very similar to entering a basement of horded everyday memorabilia — a time-warp, catalogueing a party phenomenon from a past decade. Time, its passing, and the possibilities of diving back into the past, are also, interestingly, recurrent themes in Donnie Darko.

“I’m big on re-invention and not doing the same thing over and over. Playing to the same crowd can get incredibly boring especially when you become known for a certain sound. My leaving was to explore this and play wildly different and challenging parties”. ‘In two more years’ Marc did ‘see another view’.

In many ways that is what successful event promotion is about: knowing how to capture time and place, when to let it go, and how to revel in that transcience. While during the day, citydwellers want predictable secure rhythms, at night there is a drive for experimentation and re-imagining. As we decide what the city should look, feel and sound like, and who it should be for, different audiences are at times draw in, and at times alienated. There are evolving, contesting claims to after-dark destinations. Amid all this change, it’s worth paying attention to those moments in which groups of people have cultivated belonging and recognition in a city that always seems to elude us.

“Overall, we lost money doing this!” Marc says. “It was a lot of work, but all worth it for those few throbbing nights where every song we played was cheered. It’s a great feeling when random people preach about something you created”.

23 August 2016