The Golden Mecca has a lot of alter egos. You kind of have to when you’re a songwriter, rapper, DJ, producer, designer, friend, father, and one-half moniker is OkMalumKoolKat, a name that when pronounced correctly (okay-mah-loom-cool-cat), rolls off the tongue with a consonant rhythm that’s sort of musical in and of itself. Whether he’s performing with his Boyzn Bucks crew, making tongue-in-cheek Dokta SpiZee, guesting on homegrown bangers, or working on his solo material, OkMalumKoolKat consistently creates music that’ll make you want to turn up. What’s the Jo’burg music scene like? It’s exciting right now. I’m on a couple of rxm and they’re blowing up everywhere. I rap too, so I get tangled up in hip-hop. A lot of people are working and the scene is starting to be taken seriously. There’s a lot more exciting characters, like myself, and people are feeling like it’s more relevant now. It’s progressing and people are excited about it.
Do you often meld traditional African music with more contemporary Western sounds? I’m down with that; I’ve been doing it for a while. It’s quite a complex thing — a lot of kids that are making electronic music from here are more attracted to that than roots music or “world music.” I’m more interested in the contemporary electronic stuff that’s coming out of South Africa and Africa, that’s new sounds that you haven’t heard. How did you get into making music? I used to work two jobs when I came to Jo’burg. All my off days— there would just be random days — my friends wouldn’t be around. Then I started listening to a lot of DJ Shadow and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, South African old stuff. Then I started writing. I’ve always been interested in music, but I started writing proper songs in 2007 or 2008. I wrote in high school, but I never made songs. I used to write stuff that could be considered poetry was a track for the character OkMalumKoolKat, basically introducing myself. Then I wrote a track called «Big Bootyholic» over the song “Trans-Europe Express” by Kraftwerk. J.Dilla also did one called “Big Booty Express” — so I kind of wrote a tribute track to that. This is like ‘07 or ‘08 — I was 24. I started taking it seriously from there.
OF THE ELECTRO-RAP DUO DIRTY PARAFIN THE GOLDEN MECCA HAS A LO
IEND, FATHER, AND ONE -HALF
OT OF ALTER EGO. YOU KIND OF
HAVE TO WHEN YOU’RE SONGWRITER, RAPPER
, DJ, PRODUCER, DESIGNER, F
Where did you grow up? I grew up in Durban. It's a coastal city, a lot more steady than Johannesburg. It’s a small town with quite a rich culture and environment. It was quite a cool place to grow up in. There’s a great music scene coming out of there, a great dance scene. Ever since I grew up there, the creative vibe has always been on high. But it’s a small city, so a lot of the culture stufff is coming What brought you to Jo’burg? Looking for gold. Big city dreams, man. I was already doing communications, visual arts, and marketing stuff, f
so Jo’burg felt like the right way — the best way. up. We way.AA lot of my mates actually came up.We turn up on weekends hard. We’re working and we’re partying, we’re working together and we’re working on our own. Most of my Jo’burg friends, we meet up almost every day. It’s a big city, so you take your three days of the week focusing on your own missions, then you meet up with people on the weekend. It’s a very fast-paced lifestyle. What’s it like being a young, creative person in South Africa right now? It’s cool seeing the transformation from what it was to what it is now. Where we’re sitting, in terms of the era, we’ve got power because we’ve got these tools; it’s a great feeling. People relate to our creative ideas, and not just here in South Africa people outside are understanding more about South Africa through our gospel. Are you perpetually busy? Super busy. I’ve got these two remixes that I’m pushing, I’m playing a show tomorrow as Dirty
hen I’m playing another show on Thursday night.
the girlfriend. I’ve got a son — he’s
in Braamfontein, and I’m playing a show before I go to that party, and then next week is similar vibes. No day is actually the same. It’s never Groundhog Day. Then there’s the time you’ve got to make for the fam,
for that. Tell me about your electronic
. It’s a duo —it’s me and Dokta SpiZee. He does the music production mainly. I mainly do the writing of the songs. We design also; we’re working on this font write now. We’re working on an album. We’ve dropped a mixtape back in ‘09 called The Greatest Hits Vol. 1. We’ve got a six-track EP that’s out online. We’re just pushing videos and pushing remixes. I’ve got a bunch of side-projects that I do, and Dokta SpiZe’s also got a bunch of other art projects that he does. But whenever we have time, we’ll come up with something dope. We get each other, that’s why it’s lasted so long. Do you play a lot of D DJ sets? I’ve got this other character called DJ Zharp Zharp. I play a lot of my own stuff and I play a lot of stufff from Durban. I just play my friends stufff and stufff that I like;
Zharp Zharp? It means “cool cool,” like, everything’s cool, but that would take another hour.
WE WANT DANCE TO BE OUT THERE The dance scene in Jo’burg has grown rapidly over the past two years . It’s been there for a while, but we still consider it a baby. We try to feature in a lot of music videos because we want dance to be out there, we want kids to see it, and most of the time that’s the only way they get to. The battle scene is also very big now. A lot of dancers in South Africa actually want to go the World Championship that happens in March of every year. It’s an annual thing; many dancers all over SA come to Johannesburg or fly down to Cape Town to battle, and hope they can go through to the next round and compete with other dancers around the world.
TWENTY YEARS SINCE APARTHEID
Apartheid word meaning "the state of being apart", was a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party, the governing party from 1948 to 1994. Under apartheid, the rights, associations, and movements of the majority black inhabitants and other ethnic groups were curtailed and Afrikaner minority rule was maintained. Apartheid was developed after World War II by the Afrikaner-dominated National Party and Broederbond organizations. The ideology was also enforced in South West Africa, which was administered by South Africa under a League of Nations mandate until it gained independence as Namibia in 1990. By extension, the term is nowadays currently used for forms of systematic segregation, established by the state authority in a country, against the social and civil rights of a certain group of citizens, due to ethnic prejudices.
ÂŤ AFTER 20 YEARS, WE STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO IN DEALING WITH RACIAL INEQUALITY AND IMPROVING THE LIVES OF BLACK PEOPLE IN SOUTH AFRICA Âť
since its first democratic election – when Mandela was elected the first black pre Africa has effectively become a normal country, according to Alec Russell, author of After Mandela: The Battle For The Soul Of South Africa. Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of 1996, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Russell says the post-apartheid government has stabilised the state, staged fair, multi-party elections and pursued orthodox economic policies. “However, not enough has changed; the government still needs to build schools, hospitals and water projects,” says Russell. “Meanwhile, on a psychological level, the scars of apartheid are far from healed,” says Horne. “In 1993 I had a white boyfriend, and his parents would shout ‘your bushman girlfriend is on the phone’. We split up, all over race. We need more generations to come through who have not lived under apartheid. The whites still have most of the wealth and it will take decades for that to change. After 20 years, we still have a long way to go in dealing with racial inequality and improving the lives of black people in South Africa.”
THE GRAFFITI SCENE
It’s still relatively young, but it i s growing rapidly. G raffiti o nly really started after the abolition of apartheid and the rise of the hip hop culture in the early 1980s. Cape Town is regarded as the ‘mecca’ and the movement soon spread to other cities like Johannesburg. Today, some of the pioneers continue to paint their names while a new wave of writers take to the streets. I am so proud of the South African Graffiti scene. Cape Town trains and tracksides are burning. Joburg’s bombing is out of control. The amount of international collaborations and integrated productions that are an outcome of South Africa are phenomenal. This will inspire us to grow. South Africa has come so far politically, we have come together as a whole. Painters and positive people will walk forward in unified movement.
THE GRAFFITI SCENE
JOBURG’S B OMBING IS OUT OF CONTROL
PRESIDENT OF T H E T HNO SCENE EC ANNESBURG H O J IN
DJ
CA
LDEN MEC O G