Let’s Meet | Yeoville Radio
by Tseliso Monaheng
“Yeoville Radio is Kwela and his imaginary pirate radio station that plays whatever music we wanna play. On the real though, it’s Kwela and whoever is keen to work and make boundary breaking music”
Kwelagobe Sekele hits up my Facebook inbox a few hours after I'd sent him an e-mail. He wants to know whether I've received the reply, which I have, but have yet to acknowledge receipt. He's fresh off a weekend performance at the Soweto Theatre, which saw him collaborate with former Sankomota drummer Sello Montwedi. It was also a mini-reunion of Kwani Experience, the influential band he fronted throughout the 2000s. The gig turned out amazing, if the photos and video evidence are to be trusted.
Kwela's been involved in other projects since Kwani went on hiatus -- because friends who make music together don't really split up. The last one was the PO Box Project's Maru EP. "The title is also an indirect homage to Bessie Head who wrote a book by the same title. This is my little 7 chapter book," he'd said, shortly after the project was released.
Kwela had been PO Box since his Kwani days, so maybe he thought to switch it up altogether. Address him as Yeoville Radio henceforth.
How would he describe this new project, I ask via e-mail.
"Yeoville Radio is Kwela and his imaginary pirate radio station that plays whatever music we wanna play. On the real though, it's Kwela and whoever is keen to work and make boundary breaking music," he says in response. A few months earlier, we'd kicked it on some lo-fi tip one off-beat day in Jozi. He'd broken it down to me like this: He was tired of the city; of Joburg. He sought to be elsewhere, some place where he could practice his art freely. Or maybe he'd said he needed to breathe, I can't exactly recall.
Whatever the case, Kwela -- or Yeoville Radio -- is now stationed in-between North America ("Mostly in Canada, to be precise") and Mzansi Afrika. He's a traveller at heart, and Mzansi's quick to renege on its promises to honour its heroes. It forget its travellers.
Kwani Experience, the 8-member outfit which consisted of did a lot for the brown band scene in Joburg and its surrounds during their run. They -- alongside bands like UJU, Blk Jks, Tumi & The Volume, early BCUC and Impande Core, and others -- carved a space in South African music, then dominated by Kwaito, and by House music. Their space was pan-African, and militant, and filled to the brim with pride. Their live shows were righteous riots.
Kwani was also hip to their forebearers, the likes of Sankomota, Harari, Batsumi. When Pops Mohammed wanted to do electronic music (he produces under the name The Fucharist), he reached out to the band. This was around 2007. Kwani's debut album The Birth Of Mudaland Funk (Sheer, 2005) had fucked with the brains of a youth craving for something that wasn't speaking down to them, for one, and wasn't Kwaito or House music either -- though elements of the two could be infused in the resulting experience, to stretch the pun.
The sophomore Live After Birth followed in 2007, but not after a lineup change which saw a radical shift in the band's direction.
A shit-load of dope things have happened since then. Through it all, Kwela hasn't lost the militancy, the urgency of Kwani Experience. And his politics have percolated, too. Following a recording session he organised to respond to the 2015 xenophobic attacks, he said the following: "I feel like it's more Afrophobia, because whatever happens -- all the attacks and all the violence --is directed at Somalis, Zimbabweans, Zambians, and other people from the continent. This song is the voice, and it's the voices of all those migrants experiencing that Afrophobia in a city that was built by migrants; in a city full of immigrants."
Besides travelling and creating anew, Yeoville Radio's been awarded a grant by the live music development initiative Concerts SA's Mobility Fund programme, "a touring platform funded and administered by Concerts SA which offers opportunities for South African musicians to undertake live music tours" according to their website, Says Yeoville Radio of the grant: "A program like this needs to be sustained because it benefits our SADEC live music circuit and develops future audiences."
He's also currently promoting the project's first single Pfukani, an homage to "the nine-to-fivers, the Afroprepreneurs, and the low-wage earners working to earn their bread in a continent of stark disparities."
Going back deeper in our Facebook interactions, I find a gem of an unpublished interview excerpt where Kwela shares his Jozi rap story.
When did you fall in love with rap music? What ended the relationship? What's the current status of that affair?
I discovered rap music in the 1900s. Mid-90s, listening to Snoop Doggy Dogg etc and watching BOP TV. It was only later around '97 that I fell in love with rap and rapping when a high school friend who was older than me handed me a copy of KRS One's 'I Got Next'. I wish I had discovered KRS earlier though but the township happened to me. My first rhymes were for a rap battle, which I won. Silly, huh?! The relationship never really ended. I still appreciate rap although personally as a musician, rapping is a chore I like to avoid as I feel like we've outrapped ourselves. I'm more interested in music, being a vocalist and exploring infinite possibilities with the voice. And I just keep going in deeper and deeper, like my name Kwelagobe.
And emceeing: besides the need to sharpen your English language skills, what drove the passion to spit? Who were you bumping? Who were the 'influential' names in and around Jozi rap circles then? Did you ever attend the Le Club sessions? And what about the ciphers at Ghandi?
The concept of rap, the idea of rapping, had me hooked from day one. I was like, "I can do this". I attended Le Club, then Metropolis, a lot. Wrote a lot, smoked Mandrax, drank Crystal & Black Label, kissed girls, smoked weed and discovered Biddies, many talented rappers and hated fancy rappers like Jub Jub and Infinity Players. Was at Van Der Bijl Square (Ghandi Square) every other Friday with Osmic, Cybernetic, Movice, Asylum Trybe etc. Also Kine Centre on Commissioner, back when Mak Manaka was Slow Poison. Used to look up to Robo, because he's one of the leading cats who gave me attention, back when Pro Kid didn't lift weights. Hung out with Asylum Trybe and my crew then, U.R.O (Unidentifired Rhyming Objects) and used to admire Skwatta Kamp (when Slikour was Phantom Slick), Victim (Vikinduku), Slingshot, Dot Com (the real Dot Com), Shugsmakx Smaxx, Young Weapon (Waddy/Ninja aka "I was born in the year 2000 and 6"), DJ Bionic, DJ Blaze, Snazz The Dictator, DataBase (with Tumi playing FatBoy). All these cats were influential in some way. Pre that, I was bumping Bophuthatswana (BOP) TV at home and they had Das Efx, WuTang, Craig Mac, Tupac. I was listening to Snoop before a high school friend came to me and said, "You are listening to crap" and gave me KRS. That period was the foundation. It's all in the past now.