Tag: dion monti

Soweto Sounds: Cross-border Collaborations

A chance meeting between Ruth Daniel of In Place of War (IPOW) and Malose Malahlela of Keleketla! saw the creation of a project that would result in legacy lasting beyond a week cross-border collaboration. Working with creativity and music in places of conflict or communities with conflict, IPOW organises music collaborations between famous international artists and local musicians as well as education programmes that help develop skills and share ideas around creative entrepreneurship. These two aspects, musical collaboration and training, aim to help people in those communities take their creative or music talent and make it into something more sustainable.

The creative entrepreneurial programme developed by IPOW is based on work they have done in 40 countries looking at examples of innovation and best practice. Having come to Johannesburg in November 2016 for the first round of training IPOW will be returning in September to continue their work, this time with the aim of embedding the training in Soweto. “The idea is not that we would always come out and train people in the programme but that we would train trainers in the programme,” explains Ruth Daniel.

Home to this training will be Trackside Creative, a studio in Soweto which also played host to the musical collaborations of Soweto Sounds. The goal is that those trained in the programme will be able to take it out to the wider community around Trackside Creative. In support of this IPOW has also secured music studio equipment from various sources in the UK including a mixing desk from London’s iconic jazz venue Ronnie Scotts to further enrich the creative possibilities as Trackside Creative.

Along with creative entrepreneurial training, September will also see IPOW bring across more musicians – including DJ Yoda and hip hop artists from Brazil – for more collaborations, sound engineers to train the use of the studio equipment and activists from the UK and #BlackLivesMatter activists from California for activism workshops.

The musical collaboration which took place at Trackside Creative at the beginning of the year saw the worlds of electronic music and jazz, and artists from the UK and South Africa meeting to create new, experimental works of music. The experimental Johannesburg based label Mushroom Hour Half Hour organised the South African musicians which included Thabang Tabane on percussion, Sibusile Xaba on guitar, Tubaist Mpho Moloi on vocals and flute, Tally Ngove on the bass, Nono Nkoane on vocals and Dion Monti as sound engineer. Joining them from the UK were electronic music pioneers Coldcut. The 5 day collaboration resulted in the production of 7 new works of music which will be released on Coldcut’s infamous underground electronic label Ninja Tune. The week of collaboration culminated with a performance of the works at King Kong in Johannesburg.

Beyond the week of musical collaboration and the release of the music, there are musings about touring the collaboration. For now though the South African musicians that took part will be heading to the UK in August and September for a number of performances at summer festivals. Of the musicians, vocalist Nono Nkoane will also be taking part in a special collaboration in the UK alongside 9 women vocalist and producers from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Venezuela, Brazil and across the world. The project entitled GRRRL sees these women coming together to tell their collective stories of life, conflict, inequality and change through music. Fusing together sounds of dark techno, ghetto bass, hip hop, dancehall, reggae, soul and electronica this will be dance music packed with purpose and a message to tell.

Through Soweto Sounds, IPOW and Keleketla! have created a project that has a legacy which extends beyond training workshops and collaborations and has grown into something larger with a life of its own. Aiming to help empower the musicians at Trackside Creative and its surrounding community, the project is helping to change the possibilities for creatives in Soweto, Johannesburg and South Africa at large.

Credits:

Photographer: Dwayne Innocent Kapula

Videographer: Jonathan Kyriakou

Musicians:

Coldcut – Electronics- UK

Thabang Tabane – Percussions
Sibusile Xaba – Guitar
Tubatsi Mpho Moloi – Vocals & Flute
Gally Ngove – Bass
Nono Nkoane – Vocals
Dion Monti – Sound Engineer

Co-curator: Mushroom Hour

Organisersed by Keleketla! Library & In Place Of War

‘This article forms part of content created for the British Council Connect ZA 2017 Programme. To find out more about the programme click here.’

7 August 2017
Wet Dreams Recordings presents Work Not Hype

With the launch of their first official compilation Work Not Hype, South African underground electronic label Wet Dreams Recordings is coming out of the bedroom and announcing itself as a real label. Featuring artists such as Rose Bonica, Jumping Back Slash, Dion Monti, Lorenzo, DJ 909 Clap, Yezzah and vGrrr. Altered Natives will be the final artist to feature. Label founder and producer Big Space is proud of the release. “This is the first one that’s actually going to be mastered. I paid lots of time carefully selecting the tunes. It’s very well curated.”

Wet Dreams Recordings started off as a high school fantasy for Johannesburg based Big Space. “I guess I always wanted a place where myself and my friends or like-minded people could release stuff because it was different and there was never anything like that in South Africa except for say African Dope.”

While the music on Wet Dreams Recordings spans a variety of electronic genres, the common thread running throughout is that they all take a different form of expression. “Aesthetic wise in South Africa it’s very hard to find people that think about music outside of cash or just pushing the levels of ideas. So I just look for that.”

Wet Dreams Recordings’ first release, Night Sweats Vol. 1, featured a handful of artists that shared this mindset. “Apart from Jumping Back Slash, who’s a friend, the other guys are just guys that I met on the internet. Either I contacted them or they came up to me and just said they like my stuff and vice versa.”

Work Not Hype will be available online as well as on CD. “We’re going to do a limited run of some CDs with some very nice art to accompany it so you don’t just feel like you’re buying a piece of plastic that you’ll never use. It’s gonna have a nice story, just talking shit about everyone, because people like that. There’s something for everyone I guess. If you don’t like music there’s some great gossip. Me shitting on people. Pictures of dicks. Pictures of dicks shitting on people. You know, art.”

When it comes to how his approach towards the label has changed Big Space is frank. “Shit, it’s a bit fucking scary because now I have other people’s careers in my hand not just mine. It’s just basically following strategy, something I never did before. I guess playing the game of the game, but on my own terms. The way I plan to infiltrate the game is literally by just putting out consistently good quality stuff, because it’s not just gqom and Goldfish and Freshlyground. There’s tons of other stuff that’s coming from here.”

With their aim to be a platform for different yet high quality music, Wet Dreams Recordings is carving out a niche locally at a time when the focus on South African music is greater than ever and the need for such a platform even more so. “I’m tired of trying to impress South Africa because they don’t even care about anything different unless it’s a copy of international stuff. So I want it to be heard by the right people that want to hear different music.”

13 April 2017
Dion Monti- Colour Explosions

Exuberance is the best word to describe the work of multi-media artist Dion Monti. His practice in film, soundscapes, music and installations all share bright colours and warm tones. Operating out of Johannesburg, his various projects have the quality of being deceptively simple. For example, he produced a series of geometric human figures painted onto stark black backgrounds. At first it seems almost perfunctory. But the combination of the shapes and colours create an evocative mix, as if seeing some forgotten childhood cartoon character. In a similar way, his installation work creates spaces of explosive light. Full of torn fabrics and broken frames, they look like crime scenes redesigned as playpens.

A similar aesthetic is seen in his music. His main style is minimal house, which he tweaks and freaks out with all kinds of unexpected elements. Instead of focusing on the beat, his productions constantly shift and swirl, creating non-linear soundscapes to fall into. This year already he has dropped two eps. The first, Contortions, has thee tracks, including a homage to ‘Mrs. Ples’, the famous proto-human fossil discovered outside Johannesburg. The recent release The Wonderer is more conceptual. As the title suggests, it develops the deliberately naïve style that he has cultivated in his visual art. In a supporting text he describes the work as being about the ‘the one who is curious, no child but no adult either, never stops wondering, always inspiring’. Beginning with the opening ‘the kid’ we are lead on a metaphysical journey through the self. It ends on the other side with the gently rousing ‘the adult’, which climaxes with an optimistic flourish. While much contemporary electronic music is focused on darkness and anxiety, Monti is carving out a niche by looking toward the light.

7 September 2016