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Tag: dj doowap

  • The performers bringing SA flavour to M.I.A’s shows

    The performers bringing SA flavour to M.I.A’s shows

    M.I.A will be performing for the first time in Africa in Cape Town and Johannesburg on the 7th and 8th of June, and some of South Africa’s best talent will be sharing the stage with her. The selection of DJs and performers bring together sonic and creative experiences that touch on South African genres and their evolution. K-$, Jakinda, and Angel-Ho, will inject SA flavour at the performance in Cape Town, passing the torch to Buli, DJ Doowap, Phatstoki and Dear Ribane the following evening in Johannesburg. I interviewed the supporting artists to find out about their connections to M.I.A’s work and what audiences can expect at the shows.

    This will be the first time Cape Town will get to experience one of Angel-Ho’s live sets. When asked about the connection M.I.A’s fearlessness and determination and their own musical journey, they expressed that, “being fearless is something I grew into, being on stage my whole life, I developed a strong sense of self playing the roles of many characters. The same sensibility and comfort of performing is my greatest strength and I think that speaks to my journey to empower the voiceless.” Buli shared similar sentiments stating that, “I’ve always stayed true to my sound. I’ve never compromised my art for the purpose of trying to appeal to mainstream/commercial crowds. I think that’s the one thing I’ve always taken away from observing M.I.A as an artist. She always stays true to herself and sound; she never tries to compromise her music or herself.”

    K-$ will be kicking off with a 2 hour set, taking the audience on a trip down memory lane, and then increasing momentum for a real jol. Jakinda will draw on his Afro-futurist and industrial sound, while allowing space for experimentation. Phatstoki’s appreciation of feeding off the crowd’s energy will be the guiding premise for the set. As someone who enjoys re-inventing herself through fashion and music, DJ Doowap will be mimicking her brightly coloured hair and striking clothing with bass tunes. Transcendental and futuristic will be the name of the game with Dear Ribane, while Buli brings together a mix of electronic and ambient elements backed up by hip-hop based/inspired drums.

    With fearlessness, determination and an understanding of the connection between music and movement as the thread that is present in the journey’s and work of each performer, these shows are definitely not ones to miss.

  • M.I.A comes to South Africa in June

    M.I.A comes to South Africa in June

    Black Major Selects is partnering with the 20th Encounters South African International Documentary Film Festival to bring M.I.A to South Africa for the first time this June.

    M.I.A fans will be happy to know that the visit includes the screenings of the critically acclaimed documentary MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A. Following its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival in January, South African audiences will be able to be the first on the continent to engage with the documentary that offers colourful insight into the origins of M.I.A., from her journey as an immigrant teenager in London to becoming a global star. Directed by her former art school friend Steve Loveridge, it includes personal clips shot by M.I.A and her closest friends over the last 22 years. Fans will appreciate this raw, intimate invite into M.I.A’s world.

    In addition to the screenings, M.I.A will have two live shows in Cape Town and Johannesburg on the 7th and 8th of June respectively. She will be teaming up with some of South Africa’s own musical and performance gems. This specially curated selection of South African dancers, artists and DJs radiate the same feeling of fearlessness and presence that Maya Arulpragasm has presented throughout her life. The Cape Town collaborators include Angel-Ho, K-$, and Jakinda. The Johannesburg artists are DJ Doowap, Phatstoki and Dear Ribane. This selection of artists represents various genres and perspectives on performance.

    Tickets and more information for M.I.A.’s live shows are available on the Black Major Selects site.

    Cape Town

    Date: Thursday 7th June 2018

    Venue: Old Biscuit Mill, 375 Albert Road, Woodstock

    Johannesburg

    Date: Friday 8th June 2018

    Venue: Newtown Music Factory, 10 Henry Nxumalo Street, Newtown

  • WE ARE ONE Music Festival // connecting people through music

    WE ARE ONE Music Festival // connecting people through music

    WE ARE ONE Music Festival is framed as an experience of “heritage, music and inevitably oneness”. Founders Tokoloho Booysen and Tshepang Mabizela explain that basing the festival on this idea came through reflecting on the fact that there are so many barriers in Johannesburg that divide people. Their intention was to create a platform that will allow people to engage with one another through music and other cultural experiences. “…the only way for us to [be] progressive and create the future we want is to band together, we need to develop a strong sense of community and we believe that comes by unity through diversity,” Tokoloho explains. He goes on to say that, “We [the festival] use music as a connecter because regardless of who you are, the music you like makes you feel a certain emotion and those emotions transcend genre.”

    WE ARE ONE also intends to provide a space where emerging artists can share the stage with well-known musicians. “We represent a bubbling underground, so this festival needs to showcase an unknown industry made of blood, sweat and tears,” Tshepang explains. By doing this they are hoping to contribute to the expansion of the South African music industry and introduce audiences to new faces and new sounds. With the aim of giving artists the recognition they deserve, the festival presents opportunities for future headliners and shifts in the music scene while still appreciating artists who have been in the game for a while. Artists included in the lineup are FAKA, DJ Doowap, Gyre, Langa Mavuso, Nonku Phiri and Rhea Blek, just to name a few.

    Outside of the music, there will also be food stalls, clothing stalls and a pop-up photographic exhibition to give attendees a well-rounded cultural experience. “We resonate with music but we know that music is not the only impactful art form, so fashion, visual artistry and food are art forms that can also help progressively push the artistic culture forward,” Tshepang states.

    WE ARE ONE will be taking place at 1 Fox on 31 March 2018. To find out more about who will be performing and how to buy tickets visit their Facebook page.

  • Musician RHEA BLEK : The Goddess of Finesse

    Musician RHEA BLEK : The Goddess of Finesse

    Rhea Blek calls herself The Goddess of Finesse (aka Finessa). It’s apt because she has an impressively delicate touch and skillful use of her voice, which is pretty in line with the definition of ‘finesse’. Rhea is singer/songwriter born and bred in the city of Durban, which you can kinda tell if you’ve been paying attention to the sounds coming out of the 031 lately. Although she says she creates genreless music, Rhea is part of a growing group of brilliant young women in Durban, like Red Robyn, Nipho Hurd, and Victoria Raw, who are making incredible neo-soul, R&B and jazz influenced songs that touch the soul. And I don’t even believe in souls.

    Rhea is firmly her own woman though, and while she may be playing in similar spaces, she’s doing it completely in her own way. On the opening track of her debut EP THIIIRD WAV, ‘Terms and Conditions‘, she opens up by confidently asking if she can shoot her shot and get down to business with a fine-as-hell man, with no strings attached, terms or conditions. Although, she also admits that she wouldn’t mind a little l-o-v-e, she’s happy to just get what she wants if the fine-as-hell man is down with it.

    Track 2, ‘Clyde‘, is a take on Bonnie and Clyde, but, as Rhea explained on Facebook, “this time, instead of Clyde running around and doing the crimes and Bonnie being down for it, it was Bonnie being the boss and Clyde being a loyal lover and partner in crime. That’s why the hook says ‘ride or die, sink or fly with me’”. Apparently a friend was supposed to do a verse but “the niggas were like ‘what you wrote is too hot, the song is yours, just write for the whole song’”.

    ‘Clyde’ is actually what inspired the whole EP, or, as Rhea puts it in another Facebook post, “After that, we decided – you know what? We’re making an EP, that’s what the fuck we gon’ do!” She also explains the concept for the album in her candid post, “I thought about centering it on love and on a love story with someone that started since we were kids, that’s where ‘TEENAGE DREAMS’ comes in.”

    ‘Teenage Dreams‘ is the last track on the EP and it’s a cute love song. According to Rhea, “That song is a story of how and where the love began and how long its sustained to the present. It’s just a big thank you to the dude and appreciation for the love. And it’s called ‘TEENAGE DREAMS’ because the love is so amazing it feels like we’re teenagers in love and we’re dreaming.”

    Rhea has been racking up the gigs around Durban and has even made a few Gauteng trips of late, and now that she’s put out some music, she can’t wait to put out more. She’s actually working on a follow up EP already and will be part of the We Are One Festival in Joburg alongside the likes of Moonchild, DJ Doowap, & Nonku Phiri on the 31st of March. Make sure you look out for The Goddess of Finesse, you’ll be impressed.

  • DJ Doowap // The soulful BASS queen

    “Every road is a catwalk”

    Embracing the power of this quote has made Khetsiwe Morgan aka DJ Doowap one of the most recognizable babes in the South African music space. I had a conversation with the live mix DJ and queen of bass about where it all began.

    After high school Doowap went over to the UK as a South African springboard diver, but soon found herself falling in love with the sonic energies and freedom that came from the underground club scene. She used to dance all night at gay rave parties with her friends, which had a great influence on the direction she chose to go with her own music. “They [the parties] were the best because everyone would just let loose…You were completely free. You could dress however you want. No one judges you coz everyone is just dressing crazy and skimpy.”. With the vibrations of dancehall, jungle, garage and bass music moving through her body, she found an escape from the tough life that London presented to her. During this time she started studying sound engineering, but was feeling lost. So she came to back to South Africa in 2012.

    “I think the culture and the energy in South Africa got me back on my feet and got me seeing colour again, because I think I had just forgotten what colour looked like,” Doowap expressed. She continued her studies at the Academy of Sound Engineering in Auckland Park. Telling me about the times she would hang out with childhood friend Da L.E.S, she recalls saying to him “I think I want to do DJing, because I need some money right now and there is nothing else I like doing”. It was not long before she was introduced the DJ and producer Ian Credible at DJ for Life. During her lessons with him Doowap was able to bring together the sonic energies she had absorbed while in London and develop a sound that amalgamates hip hop, gqom and bass. Before she knew it she had her first gig at Roxy’s in Melville.

    “I remember it perfectly!” Doowap exclaimed. She recalls the only person dancing during her set was the friend she had invited. “I wasn’t nervous because I already knew no one would know what I am doing…I felt a bit shit obviously because you want people to be dancing. But at the same time I know I got to teach everyone in the crowd something”. The next day she received a call from Yfm. Excited by the new sounds she was playing, they wanted her on their team. “It was a blessing in disguise having a whole different genre.”.

    While she was at Yfm she wanted to discover music from home. Young bass producers were sending her their music, and she became a catalyst for many of them to get played on radio. At the time bass music was a relatively new genre in South Africa and was not getting that much air time on radio stations. Her show became the centre for introducing this new sound to the airwaves. “It was an amazing time to discover fresh talent when they did not have a platform to put out their music. They had all this bass sound and they didn’t even know where they were getting it from. It was just coming from their soul,” Doowap explained, “And I liked the freedom that Yfm gave me. It was great that I could choose anyone I wanted and put their songs on.”.

    Taking a moment to reflect on how her music has evolved since 2012, Doowap feels as though the main element which has changed is that her music has more soul. “I think in the beginning I was just playing songs I liked back to back… Before I was playing bass but it was really hard electronic bass. It didn’t feel soulful. And now I really make sure that every song I play has a positive message in it, and it hits you deep inside, you know, with the vibrations.”. When armed with good bass speakers, she has seen how this soulful element in her music has allowed her to captivate a crowd and guide them to what she described as a “trance of bass”.

    Doowap’s love for the genre deepened when she started reading about how bass music is powerful for women and the womb. “Bass is all for you bottom chakras, and that is really good for women. It soothes your womb.”.

    Thinking about how bass music has grown in South Africa, Doowap pointed out that people do not realize how much the genre has infiltrated their lives. “Everyone wonders why they are all raging and losing their minds but it is because of the bass. That bass that makes your legs shake and makes you want to lose your mind. It is there the whole time and it’s very rare that you will get songs without it”. Having been on the scene in South Africa since its infancy, Doowap has enjoyed watching people dive into it and experiment with that they can do with the sound.

    A highlight for Doowap at the moment is being the presenter for a new hip hop rap battle show dropping on SABC 1 next week called One Mic. She will also be going to Berlin on the 19th of May to play at a club called SchwuZ. Having found the love for bass at gay raves in London, and to now being booked to play a 3 hour set at one of the biggest gay clubs in Europe, Doowap has come full circle.

  • Georg Gatsas – Exploring Cities Through Portraiture

    The work of Swiss photographer Georg Gatsas has been published by magazines such as Wire, Dazed, i-D and Beat. Georg has been operating between London and Zurich for the past couple of years. He recently spent some time in Johannesburg as part of an artist residency organized by Pro Helvetia. I caught up with him to find out about his work and his time in SA.

    Georg shot his first series called “The Process” (2002-2007) in New York which ended up in several exhibitions, magazines and publications. Currently, he mainly works as an analogue photographer. Shooting on film has allowed him to develop a particular attitude towards the shots he takes. Thinking about the cost of film rolls and that each closing of the shutter has a feeling of finality to it, Georg tries to focus and capture the right moment, taking less shots than he would with a digital camera. And often he finds it easier to carry around an analogue camera. In mentioning his creative process, Georg emphasized how he enjoys working organically and tries not to force any part of his work.

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    Georg’s first series were mainly portraits of musicians, visual artists, performance artists and designers which he shot at night. The people he was shooting were living mostly parallel to mainstream society; they had created their own hub. Through taking their portraits he got into their sleeping rhythms and started shooting nighttime streetscapes  and the environment of the people in his portraits. The combination of these pictures became a portrayal of New York City and particular kinds of people who lived there. While residing in London for an exhibition in 2008, he started shooting the UK base music scene, which over an eight-year period has developed into a series called “Signal The Future”.”The portraits as part of the series become a portrayal of a certain environment, but also of the times we live in.” Georg explained that his work can be looked at in different ways, bringing to the fore questions on global sound, migration politics, cultural production in a hyper-capitalist city such as London, new aesthetics, new instruments of the underground, and how the mainstream reacts to it.

    Having only spent time in Europe and the States before, he was initially quite thrown by the different rhythms and ways of being in Johannesburg. But soon his desire to learn about the flow of the city became stronger. His photographs from SA will follow a similar creative starting point to his previous work – capturing artists best representing their city. He has been photographing some of South Africa’s most interesting producers, musicians, artists and performers of 2016, including Fela Gucci, Mante Ribane and Dear Ribane, DJ Lag, DJ Doowap and Moonchild Sanelly. In his comment on how he selected people to photograph he explained that “it has to be a fan boy thing. So I am first of all a fan [of their work].” He explained that his choices were based on people doing important work, but work that was not quite defined yet. “I don’t like defined stuff. I like surprises…I like when people try out new things, things that move forward.”The photographs from Georg’s Johannesburg series will also be linked and combined with the images from his previous series as some of the artists in all these series know each other personally, are communicating and collaborating with each other.

    manthe_ribane_iiManthe Ribane

    Georg’s experiences in Johannesburg and the people he has met have influenced the way in which he thinks about his work. “I have learned a lot politically, work wise, rhythmically. And a lot on the history of photography coming out of Africa and South Africa which is heavy, complex and difficult.”

    Georg will be back in April for the second part of his residency. His first solo museum exhibition will take place at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland in November 2017, and parts of it will hopefully lead into partnership exhibitions in London and Johannesburg.

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    sky_h1_iSky H1

    bill_kouligas_iBill Kouligas

  • Pussy Party Politik

    It’s dark and warm in the sweet sweat-scented nightclub. Exclusively female and femme-identified DJs stroke the decks — a sonic pleasure patrol, an Empress insurrection. There’s a Hello Kitty pussy-cat vagazzling the DJ booth, backlit by velvet and a lick of pink lighting. Think Pussy Pride. Pussy Play. Pussy Power. Pussy Party. It’s a story about how femme bodies might take back the dancefloor.

    Pussy Party pops off every second Wednesday of the month at Kitcheners, offering a platform in which femme DJs and artists can “practice, incubate, exchange and expose”. The organisers describe it as“an experiment in amplifying feminine energy on the dance floor”, an act of “yielding beyond the gender binary”, a femmeditation. In a thickly and narrowly-defined masculine industry, Pussy Party has sought to nurture and celebrate young female and femme-identified talent: each party is preceded by a three-hour workshop for aspirant femme selektas.

    Three months in, Pussy Parties have boasted a fierce line-up of femme foxes: SistaMatik, FAKA, Lady Skollie, DJ Doowop, DJ Mystikal Ebony, LoveslavePhola, and Lil Bow.  But the curators, creators, and dancefloor equators behind Pussy Party are DJs Phatstoki and Rosie Parade. Rosie Parade (AKA Coco) is part of Broaden a New Sound, music curators for Kitcheners.

    ‘When we arrived at Kitcheners, in 2009, courtesy of Andrew the DJ, there was nothing. There wasn’t 70 Juta. There wasn’t Smokehouse. Nothing was happening at Alexander Theatre. Kitcheners was a dive bar. I had my 21st birthday here at a time when what is now the bathroom was the office, when Great Dane was just an empty hall. Initially Kitcheners was the type of venue anyone could book. Butin late 2014 we were conscious to say ‘Okay, what’s happening to the space around us? What’s happening to the club? What’s happening to the dancefloor?‘

    Phatstoki (AKA Gontse) is a music mixologist and penetrating photographer, whose artistic raw material has been gathered through a lifetime of traversing city, suburb, village and Soweto, where she now lives. Phatstoki’s fluid audio-eclecticism resonated with Broaden a New Sound, whose mandate has been to curate genre-bending, and in this case, gender-bending night-spaces. ‘Phatsoki’s had this series of mixes called Boobs and Honey ’Rosie Parade remembers. ‘Boobs and Honey! Those are literally like my top two things (laughs) ’The two groove goddesses, Rosie Parade and Phatstoki became reciprocal fan-girls, teaming up to create what is now Pussy Party.

    ‘I remember walking through the club and being approached constantly’, Rosie Parade says, ‘being pressurised constantly by men.’ Whether a baggy hoody, or a tight skirt, or a long dress — each garment is re-imagined as the self-same solicitation. And so, femme bodies are propelled through a current of pull—stroke—squeeze—clutch. The crowd become an excuse to make the brash laying of hands appear accidental. And the dancefloor — ‘Hey baby’ — becomes — ‘You look like a million dollars’ — an exercise — ‘I like your…’ — in carving out space and protecting one’s borders. Just the presence of a woman in a nightclub, particularly if alone, can be read as implicit consent for all manner of invasions.

    Then there are those femme bodies that outwardly supersede gender circumscription. Courageous, embattled bodies living dangerous, defiant and godly in a beyond-binary space — whose bodies are cowardly read as provocations to violence.  As Desire Marea of FAKA once told me, a proximate dance might result in a punch to the face.

    ‘Looking at the dancefloor’, Rosie Parade explained, ‘there came a point [where we as Kitchener’s management thought] ‘Okay there’s a lot of guys. Women [and femme-identified men] are telling us that they feel unsafe. That’s not a positive club environment. I’m privileged that the management and staff at Kitcheners trust and respect me. So it’s about ‘What do I have that I can use?’ And for me, this space, and these people, this is what I have that I can use’

    ‘Maybe’, says Phatstoki,‘there’s a space for women/femme energies to actually own the dancefloor — not just necessarily own the dancefloor so that guys can hang around, but own the dancefloor ‘cos we actually wanna party, for us. We are the party, so can we actually be given the space to do just that.’

    Go to an instalment of Pussy Party and you’ll still find many men. ‘To be quite honest I don’t think femmes want to exclude men’ Phatstoki says. ‘We just want some goddamn respect! Maybe this is a way we can teach them. Ya’ll are more than welcome, but ya’ll need to know what this party is about. If you don’t like it, by all means [leave]… if you wanna appreciate our efforts and party with us, please do…’ But understand that ‘it’s not your night tonight, you know’.

    True to its name, Pussy Party, in monthly cycles, sets out to be a place of warmth, and pleasure — to cradle and excite us. It changes its shape to let us in, remoulding the club-space into a femme-positive experimental sanctuary. It can ache for us. It can be potentiallylife-giving. But, as with any pussy, right of admission is reserved. There are pre-requisites of respect, appreciation and recognition that Pussy Party is grappling with enforcing.

    ‘Actually’, Rosie Parade says,‘what’s been simple is: put women behind the decks, or femme-identified individuals behind the decks [and] the femmes in the space respond. Tell people that it’s a space for femmes and honeys will come through’.

    Both Rosie Parade and Phatstoki know that this is the awkward, messy, beautiful beginning — of a movement to disrupt club cultures. ‘It’s still marginalised. You couldn’t do this on a weekend. We’re mid-week and we’re mid-month. It’s not payday weekend’. 

    They also know that Pussy Party, as it stands, attracts a particular, pre-defined Model C, middle class. ‘But [for this space], this is how it starts’, says Phatstoki. ‘I want to bring these issues up, and depending on how we address them, that’s when I’ll know if we’re serious about the movement or not. [We need to make sure we] don’t forget those who go through the most [regarding this subject].’

    The Pussy Party agenda aspires to openness. ‘Come through and tap us on the shoulder and say what’s up. This is the night to come through. If you have a problem coming through, tell us about the problem. I think you need to admit where you’ve gone wrong and made mistakes ’Rosie Parade says. ‘Openness. That’s a big part of a femme party’, Phatstoki adds, smiling. ‘That flexibility. It can stretch’, laughs Rosie Parade, ‘and it can shrink. It can self-lubricate’.

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  • The confessional battle-cry of Lex LaFoy’s Alienation

    Lex LayFoy recently dropped a powerful, confessional battle-cry against complacency and conformity in the form of Alienation, produced by Sonic Boom SA. It blazes honesty, liberated self-expression through its uncut and unabbreviated lyrics, set to the dirtiest, grimiest trap beat by AHT Gee.

    The passionate uproar channels Lex LaFoy’s various incarnations, draws from her multiple processes of personal evolution in order to speak in an immediate and uncensored way to all of those battling against the sharp edges of the world, to all of those who are feeling isolated and frustrated by their inability to ‘properly’ embody preconceived notions of how a person should or shouldn’t be. The track explodes the absurdity of these imposed definitions and points to the way that they’re entirely inappropriate for the complexity of human experience. It says that it’s okay to feel estranged by these unrealistic and artificial constraints, it’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling- the fact that you exist and are going through the things that you are, means that there are others like you; that there are tribes of support to be formed through our mutually difficult processes of self-definition.

    Lex LayFoy is at the top of her game, and seems to be fully embracing her own power after recently leaving iFani’s label disGuiz, through which she grew exponentially and produced juicy, jaw-droppers like Sushi Dip and Flex. She’s a creative force to be reckoned with, a fierce-polymorph of unstoppable ability; from the energy of her live performances, to the immediacy of her message in Alienation– she can drop truth with the same intensity that she can drop a dance move.

    Lex LaFoy is part of a powerful movement of femmes currently redefining South Africa’s music scene through the ferocity of their skills- from Gigi LaMayne to Patty Monroe, Fifi Cooper to LaFoy’s own collaborator DJ Doowap, with whom she toured Europe in 2014 as a part of the Purple Velvet International Female Hip Hop Tour. These firebrands are firmly at the wheel, making sure that there’s no such thing as a backseat for women in the industry.

    Keep glued to Lex LaFoy’s Facebook Page for details about her upcoming debut album Honey Bass, set to drop in a couple of months, as well for another international tour with DJ Doowap, and for a soon-to-be-released LP, combining EDM, pop, trap, and hip hop, as part of the trio called TriGO. You can also check out her Hlanganisa Mix Tape on SoundCloud.

    In the meantime, check out the video for Alienation, take strength, and know that you are not alone…

  • Millenial nostalgia: reincarnating legends and giving high-fives to the past

    The paint on the door was quite chipped, but the black letters remained clear: “Nostalgia is one helluva drug” it said like an answer to a question. 

    And now, here in South Africa – specifically Johannesburg – we get through the day with our trusty dose of the good stuff.

    Defined as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for a return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” In the spirit of the times, nostalgia’s favourite hashtag is #ThrowbackThursday. In our local context, the yen spins an orbit around the time loosely defined as post-94.

    Most notably and obviously, the post-94 period represents South Africa’s technicolour transition from apartheid to democracy. The birth of democracy was potent and many nascent paths were forged spurred by the energy of the anomalous rainbow nation. For one, black people were free to express themselves without the fear of oppression. The new nation not only provided an opportunity for expression but a platform too. The national broadcaster, the SABC was restructured with the intended consequence being content that was reflective of, and responsive to, all of the people of the new South Africa. For the first time, the nation’s storytelling instrument reflected the full spectrum of the nation.

    At the time, nostalgia was simply illogical, and the future although splashed in rainbow hues was at least historically, unchartered territory. The present was the only option and the sentiment during that period was reflective.

    In turn, young South African creatives took advantage of the opportunity for expression and their pent-up creative energy birthed unmatched work that would later provide the fuel for current day nostalgia. The squiggly bright outline of “Hanging with Mr Cooper” said a lot about the 90s: there was a bright hue to everything.

    The door found on Albertina Sisulu Road, close-to but not-quite Braamfontein was found next to a long abandoned general dealer decorated with heavy locks that moaned when the wind forced its way through the City of Gold. 

    For examples of the current manifestations of millennial nostalgia, you don’t have to look too far, only a bit more carefully.

    Watch “Don’t Panic” by DJ Speedsta and Moozlie and witness the spirited reincarnation of Lebo Mathosa and Brenda Fassie embodied by Moozlie and DJ Doo Wap juxtapose with FaceTime conversations, Spice Girls’ chokers and Rihanna-inspired blue lippy.

    The work of The Sartists – a Joburg-based creative collective – sings of the past in a manner that is evocative, even if misunderstood. Telling the Noted Man website of their infamous arrival at the 2014 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week (MBFW) dressed in 1990s Bafana Bafana and Kaiser Chiefs soccer jerseys, bucket hats and baggy carpenter pants. The duo was met with suspicion by security guards and guests, despite their carefully considered intention to celebrate the golden victories of the two teams, along with the matchless style of their supporters. Sports in apartheid South Africa were – much like everything else – largely the reserve of white people, and so, the significance of supporting the successes of the majority-black football teams goes beyond sport. The Sartists note that at the same event, they were offered an undisclosed sum for the Chiefs jersey by Kaizer Motaung Jnr himself, thrifting is imbued with new meaning when seen as a way to reimagine and reclaim the past.

    Okmalumkoolkat is another artist who blurs the divide between “what will be” and “what has been” simultaneously adopting the monikers “future mfana” and the “Zulu Michael Jackson”. Drawing cultural currency from 90s kwaito and hip hop, Okmalumkoolkat isn’t lying when he spits: “Back to the future and I’m chilling in the front seat” in his smash track, “Holy Oxygen”.

    Collectively, the aesthetic and work of the above mentioned is an act of time travel: to take back what was promised. Part-nostalgic, part-futuristic. Part-passive, part-active. Consumers of the global village rooted in South Africa, the purveyors of millennial nostalgia are powerful reminders that the past echoes until it is heard.

    Walking past the door, my friend noted that she had seen that very same quote on a sticker “somewhere in Berlin, I think” while she was waiting for the bus. 

    However, the sentiment of nostalgia is not isolated to South Africa – globally, it is most noticeable in the at-the-point-of-cliché hipster movement. Think flannels, artisan products, spectacles and a wartime haircut and on the surface you have the checklist for the “perfect hipster”, but upon further inspection – beyond the pretension – there is a real desire to return to what was, or more accurately what movies starring James Dean and the like, say “what was”.

    With regard to South Africa, the nostalgia is for a lived, real experience often witnessed with the optimistic glow of childhood innocence. Globally, however, the hipster movement represents nostalgia for an idea, and perhaps that’s why it is so seductive: ideas can be perfect, memory by nature cannot.

    Upon closer inspection, next to the door in small neat type, someone had written: “nostalgia kills happiness”.