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«Producing Music Is a Privilege» | norient.com 1 Oct 2021 03:13:01 «Producing Music Is a Privilege» INTERVIEW by Jacek Szczepanek What can the Norient reader find at Off, a three day long feast for lovers of alternative music, that takes place every year in Katowice in Southern Poland? John Wizards and DakhaBrakha, both of who have a bit twisted relations with popular music traditions of the places they’re from. Maybe it’s because they’ve taken them on tour. Read the first festival review about DakhaBrakha with a short introduction by the author here and the second one about John Wizards below. John Withers is the man behind the concept of John Wizards, a South African hybrid pop epiphany of 2013, whose advocators include Wayne Marshall. John produced the album with a vocalist, Emmanuel Nzaramba, and then translated the music to a six-piece band setup to form a touring act. On the day of their midnight gig at Off the band arrived early. After a long conversation followed by a beer with John, I bumped into Emmanuel on the festival grounds and we talked as we wandered around. While John Wizards is the fusion of John and Emmanuel’s spirits, Emmanuel and John differed on certain aspects of the band’s life. Additionally, Emmanuel’s comments were not recorded, but were written down. I’ll leave my reconstruction thereof as a kind of footnote to the interview with John, just as I took it in. https://norient.com/blog/johnwizards Page 1 of 7 «Producing Music Is a Privilege» | norient.com 1 Oct 2021 03:13:01 [Jacek Szczepanek]: First I would like to focus on the word geography. I realised that there’s a lot of internal geography in your music, as well as external geographical labels added on by others. What are your feelings towards geography? And its connections to your music? [John Withers]: I like to think that music is at least partly regionally specific, that it’s very much a reflection of the city I grew up in and of some of the places I’ve travelled around in Africa. The song titles reference places I’ve been, less stylistically, but more in terms of the type of feeling they gave me when I was there. Then Emmanuel comes from Rwanda and he’s grown up in a completely different tradition speaking an entirely different language and it obviously brings to bear on the music when it’s made. It comes as a hybridised thing. [JS]: Your music is labelled South African or from Cape Town or from Africa – the big labels people talk about here in Europe. How do you position yourself towards it? [JW]: That’s a funny thing. When I was making the music, I wasn’t quite so aware of the way things are internationally, geographically – ideas about South Africa, ideas about Africa and its music. When I first came here touring, it was a bit of a shock. There is an interesting disconnect between these ideas and my personal experience, my ideas about the music I’m making. [JS]: What shocked you? What’s the disconnect like? [JW]: There is obviously an oversimplification of it. There’s an unfortunate fetishising of it. We’ve had a show in London and they went around interviewing people asking them who they are excited to see at the festival and one of the people said: «I’m really excited to see John Wizards. They are from Africa». It’s a weird thing to feel that you’re novel or you’re interesting just because you are from somewhere different. [JS]: Do you remember any other things that annoyed you? Other examples of this oversimplification? [JW]: I think this is disconnected from the music. But you see weird photographic exhibitions which are centred around Africa, Africanness from a European perspective. You see a whole bunch of values that they’re placing onto the subject which for me doesn’t resonate with the reality. As much as I feel that the music does to a certain degree reflect the place I came from, it was always a very natural thing. The way I was writing, that’s just the way it manifested itself. I hope it doesn’t bring to bear too much on future – but I don’t think it will. What is weird is acknowledging of this audience that you’re writing for, of this certain expectation, of the certain criteria which, if you want to be well received, you should try and fulfil. I want to try and step by from it as much as possible. https://norient.com/blog/johnwizards Page 2 of 7 «Producing Music Is a Privilege» | norient.com 1 Oct 2021 03:13:01 [JS]: What is the way Cape Town spills into your music? [JW]: A little bit lyrically – I reference some of the places and some of the scenarios I know very well. Also, if you ask South Africans, there is a stereotype of Cape Town to be very relaxed and laid back and it reflects that a bit as well. [JS]: You’ve done quite a lot of commercial music. What is the social position of the people who make commercial music in Cape Town? [JW]: People that write commercial music are often most involved in their own individual creative musical pursuits. You don’t get many people who just focus on writing commercial music – for most it’s just the way of making money. It’s a skill that they have, it’s one of the only feasible ways that you can pay your rent. You’ve got a lot of very cool people doing this thing. Traditionally people think it’s a bit weird, businessy – the pragmatic way of dealing with music. But you have a lot of people doing cool music also doing commercial music. They’re all very nice guys, and young – similar age to me, some even younger. A lot of people who want to do their own thing just end up having to do this other thing to sustain themselves. I feel like you have to come from quite a privileged position (to only do music you like) though – either have a part time job or try and work commercially with music. I feel like you have to come from a proper position of privilege where you don’t really need to worry about money. [JS]: In your music I was able to trace shangaan electro, kwaito, South African house. What is the general opinion about these genres in Cape Town’s creative community? [JW]: I think everyone thinks they’re really cool and gets excited about them. A lot of people end up trying to reference these genres in some way. People are quite proud of them. The three styles that you mentioned are popular to varying degrees. Kwaito was very popular in the 90s, late 90s and then it died out a bit and has a bit of a revival at the moment. And then you have shangaan music which is super regionally specific. It’s coming from the North-East of the country and there it’s got a big fan base, but outside of that it’s not the kind of music you’d hear on the radio. Then house music is ubiquitous, it’s really popular on several radio stations. It’s one of the handful very popular styles in South Africa. Because it does feel very South African people are still very proud of it, they still think it’s very interesting. There’s a lot of scope in the genre to do interesting things with it. I am also referencing the music stylistically, but it’s rare that I’ll sit down and say I’m going to write a song in a certain style. There’ll be specific elements of the style that I’m writing that I musically like or that I find interesting. So it is subconsciously filtered into the music. [JS]: Do you fear sometimes that somebody will tell «you destroyed shangaan electro»? https://norient.com/blog/johnwizards Page 3 of 7 «Producing Music Is a Privilege» | norient.com 1 Oct 2021 03:13:01 [JW]: Not really, not at all. It’s funny, there’s this one guy who is the face of shangaan, the guy who really popularised it overseas – Nozinja. I had a funny thing when I met with his manager, who is from the UK. He was in Cape Town and I had a drink with him. And he said he’d played one of the shangaan inspired tracks I’ve written to Nozinja and he showed me a picture of his reaction. Nozinja looked a little bit confused, a little bit pissed off, but it doesn’t really bother me too much. [JS]: But you haven’t met him yet? [JW]: No, it’s still to come. Apparently he’s very precious about the style, because he thinks he’s the originator of it, he doesn’t like people imitating it. So it’s going to be interesting. [JS]: Do people watch out for not exploiting African genres in music? [JW]: I think it’s something you do need to approach with a certain amount of caution, but it’s also not something that should put you off. If your intentions are good it is a really good thing to be able to work with the traditionalism all around you. It makes you feel grounded in a place, which is I think one of the more valuable things you can have as a musician, to be able to feel as though you’re part of something much bigger than yourself.

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