Interview || Layers With Thibo Tazz

Exclusive Interview With Thibo Tazz At A Taste Of Sonar Johannesburg 

We caught up with one of Cape Town's most promising deep house visionaries at A Taste of Sonar Johannesburg this past weekend about the changing landscape of the local house scene and how he got Skrillex onto Gqom music.

You’ve officially just played A Tase of Sonar here in Johannesburg, how does it feel having this renowned festival come to South Africa? 

Cape Town is loving the idea that Sonar is finally coming to South Africa, but to now see guys like myself  who’ve been bubbling under getting called up to do Sonar in Joburg to represent the Cape Town sound, because that’s essentially what I was doing, playing stuff that I know is working in Cape Town, from the new stuff to the old stuff from the underground Cape Town scene. Joburg responded positively so it was quite cool to actually see that.

So have you been permanently based in Cape Town?

Based in Cape Town, born in the Free State in a small town called Krooonstad. I’ve been based in Cape Town for just over ten or eleven years now, actually ten years because I got there in 2004. I studied there, finished my studies back in 2009. I was DJing in-between my studies and having fun, eventually I was like “cool, I got my degree now, what to do?” On the left I’ve got DJing, right I’ve got being a lawyer full time which would’ve driven me up the wall, so I went into DJing full time. Quite difficult to explain to the parents, but once they started seeing the work being put into it that’s when they warmed up to the idea that there might be a future in this thing. So yeah, ten years in Cape Town and still going strong.

Over that period you’ve obviously played in Johannesburg as well, and with reference to your experiences in the Cape Town scene, what are some of the unique nuances and differences you’ve picked up in each of those cities?

I think one thing I’ve noticed is, I know this whole ethos about Joburg and Pretoria specifically as the capital of house music, which is very true, but if you look at it from a more “breakthrough” sound, Cape Town is really holding its own. What it’s allowing is that we’re not just coming through as DJs but also as producers that are making music that wouldn’t necessarily be played on radio and that’s where the distinction comes through, where in Joburg you still have that deep house sound with a vocal element, but what I’ve noticed is that it’s more targeted towards eventually landing on radio. With us, there’s hardly any vocals, big bass or big room sound. The more low frequencies the better, a more minimal sound and if you’re lucky enough to have vocals, cool, otherwise it’s mostly instrumentals, that’s what we’re doing. It’s more of a driving sound that’s cutting edge; it’s got elements from all kinds of music, you’ll hear jazz elements coming into it but still driving that four-to-the-floor sound. I wouldn’t want to say we’re more underground, I mean we all have underground scenes, both Joburg and Cape Town, where people are purists about it but from a musical approach we’re more on the cutting edge than up here where it’s more welcoming with lots of sing-along vocals, for us it’s more raw, dirty, with fat kicks and basslines and it seems to be getting a lot of Capetonians going.

I can’t say many countries have our particular situation where kids in high school and right down to primary school are listening to house music and because of that early exposure do you feel that it’s time for the music to be maturing along with them? If I can take an example of artists in the UK like Actress and Burial that grew up on the music and club cultures of their time and eventually went on to explore the “photo negative” or inverse of that music in their own productions. Are we missing an equivalent in South Africa where most house music, as you’ve pointed out, is geared towards radio play, is it time for a critique of South African house music? Do we need artists to start taking an introspective look at our musical identity and club culture?

I think that time has arrived. The overall house scene nationally is still quite new and it stems from other inspirations like the Chicago house sound, UK garage and disco so it comes from different corners and it took a while for the sound here to find its identity but you’ve been getting guys that have been pioneering the new South African house sound and because of that I feel that the time will allow for that “b-side” to come out. With a lot of the releases and emerging artists lately I feel that time has arrived, it’s just a question of whether it can sustain itself. We’re still seeking that identity and recognition from the rest of the world. We’ve got guys like Culoe De Song, Black Coffee, Jullian Gomes and I could even go as far as Goldfish and GoodLuck who are touring a lot internationally, representing the South African sound.

I’ll make an example about this, in 2008 I attended the Red Bull Music Academy with Culoe De Song, we were the two South African participants to have been selected out of thousands of applicants. The sound that he was making at the time was considered afro/tribal which in its own it was sort of the “rebel” sound and now you’re getting to a point where in 2014 every second song you hear on the radio has a tribal feel to it. So you can imagine that different genres with the music are emerging in their own right and you have catalysts that are like “I’m gonna own this, make it my own.”

What i’ve noticed in Cape Town in the electronic/techno scene a lot of guys are pushing the deep tech sound but at the end of the day you’re getting guys who are flipping it so that it’s still considered deep tech but it’s totally different. Some guys that I can think of are Ruegroove, who was a vocalist for Crazy White Boy, who's now doing his own thing and Floyd Lavine who I've admired for a couple of years now. So now it's just a case of getting international recognition rather local recognition because and I can already go to a township in Joburg and play the same set in a club like Era in Cape Town. So we’re still getting there, we just need an international platform to show the world what we’re doing.

I’ve noticed there has been a lot of interest from foreign bloggers in the South African scene but there’s always this barrier in terms of distribution and information. If I can take an example of the emerging Gqom scene in Durban, there is a definite interest but it’s hard to penetrate that market when most songs aren’t tagged  or just have cellphone numbers and BBM pins as song titles. It’s like we’re missing a vital “middle” element between the international market and the kids making these songs.

It’s actually interesting that you mention it because a couple weeks ago we were speaking about this at a workshop in Cape Town with Heidi and Culoe De Song and the question was posed of whether the Gqom sound is music that can be accepted as the South African sound and honestly I’m a big fan of the music. I don’t necessarily understand it but I believe the kids, and honestly it is kids making the music, and whatever it is that’s inspiring this explosive sound, because that’s exactly what it is, you have a string, drums and these explosive sixteen-count moments with snares layered with cymbals and it really gets in your face and for some reason it just has all this energy and to be honest, we need it, we need it to grow the South African scene. We’ve got the deep house scene, it’s maturing, we’ve got the electronic and hip hop scenes. So we need these sub genres to really start projecting the South African scene but in order for others to take it seriously, these kids need to take it seriously as well, the way they’re making it and whether it’s mastered and sounds good. I’ve collected some of those tracks myself and the most I've collected in terms of quality is 128kbps, I’ve never come across a 320kbps track. If they can start taking this seriously I can guarantee that in two years it will be playing everywhere and massive guys will be playing it.

For example, I played some of the music at Glastonbury festival recently and I did a back-to-back set with Skrillex and my set was comprised of Gqom music and immediately he was like “dude, I need your flash drive because this music is phenomenal, I’ve never heard anything like this, it’s getting everybody going.” I told him this was Gqom music, he couldn’t pronounce it but he was like “You guys, don’t sleep on this.” So for someone like him to already identify that, it shows we need to start taking it seriously. Once we get all the structures in place, It’s just a matter of time. It will blow up.

Another point I wanted to speak about was that you put together one of the Deep House Chronicles compilations and from my experience in my school days those compilations, pirated and shared amongst everyone at school, were always our main source of house music. The youth here hasn’t fully adopted the power of the internet to inform their music knowledge beyond social networking and casual browsing. Are we not taking charge of our musical palette yet? Is there still too much reliance on DJs as the suppliers of house music in South Africa? For example Kaskade’s It’s You It’s Me off the Soul Candi Sessions 4 compilation is still so timeless amongst us, yet why do we stop there? Why aren’t we taking the initiative to dig deeper into these artists ourselves if we like their music? 

What I’ve noticed is that it’s just a lack of interest. The way this information was filtered through to our generation , and I’m talking about when house music here was still emerging through vinyl and CDs and way back to the Fresh House Flava 1 compilation when it just came out, the way that music was introduced was never as “I’m listening to a Theo Parrish song” it was “I’m listening to a DJ Fresh song” and once DJ Fresh stops making those compilations we’ll lose interest. The psyche has been aligned in that manner. But you have the new age kids who are getting interested in it where they’re asking about who these artists are, where their sound comes from and why it’s blowing up in Germany. It’s just a matter of being patient with everybody else because that’s how we’ve been structured to think. The introduction of house music in South Africa was through DJs and not necessarily through producers and that’s where the interest fell off, the DJs were the pioneers. If you had a Kerri Chandler that was born in Pretoria then it would’ve been a different story, back then when he was making classics, even if Frankie Knuckles was from here we’d have a different story right now. Because the DJ was the pioneer, we’d follow the DJ and not the producers. That’s why through my compilations it was more of my introduction into the scene stating “this is who I am” but also letting listeners know that now that they have discovered who this person is, don’t necessarily focus on him but focus on the structure and sound I’m trying to portray. That’s why I’m mostly just dropping EPs right now, now that they’ve discovered the artist, now that they’ve discovered the individual outside of the Soul Candi compilations. Now it’s just about patience and the right form of communication.

Grab Thibo Tazz's Layers EP for free here