I strolled around the club, observing the crowd and quickly realised that most of the audience were middle class, late teen / early 20s French fahionistas, getting down to the electric beats of a DJ from the townships of Pretoria!
Years back, in London, promoters would mostly target SA expats, but this is a new phase in African electronic music and DJ Mujava’s smash hit ‘Township Funk’ has made the cross over with heavy rotation on MTV, Radio1, XFM, internet radio and mixtapes, being remixed by trend-setting DJs like Sinden from Radio1 (UK), Diplo from the US who is hugely in demand after the success of M.I.A (whose hit ‘paper planes’ is now on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack) and Radioclit from Sweden, who have just remixed Britney Spears’ Circus. This hit track was also listed in the top 20 of the Guardian’s best music from 2008!
After his set, I met the man of the moment, flown in from Johannesburg the day before, landed in Paris that morning and heading out to Germany the next day, followed by Belgium the day after. Mujava was tired. I almost mistook his shyness and fatigue as arrogance. But he was cool, laid back and confident. This was young man who was grounded.
He told me how his sound is ‘the sound of the people, driven by what people in the street want’. Mujava’s success came from an innovative marketing technique of giving his music to taxi drivers to play. “The taxi drivers would then come knocking at my door asking for more music,” said Mujava! Soon his music spread to Joburg and a record label came out looking for him!
Sheer, Mujava’s label, put the record out soon after and it fast became a huge hit in South Africa. And yet it took almost two years for the rest of the world to catch on! “I’ve been doing music for 9 years and yet the international attention came as a surprise! I make music for my people, but I’m very happy that people outside of South Africa love it!”
Yep the world has changed, like Obama says’ ‘What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them’. The world is opening up and is hungry for new, fresh ideas.
Website www.myspace.com/djmolaudi
