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Music

Introducing Naas: South Africa's Emerging, Centrifugal Music Agency

South African music is undergoing something of a renaissance and naas—a publisher-cum-label-cum-music agency is pumping out some of the country's freshest talent.

The already baking hot morningsun is leaking through the buildings as I exit Evol—Cape Town’s premier, dingy art school party—and climb into a cab with Amy Ayanda and some Irish tourist. We’re heading to a shitty sweaty house club that stays open till half past illegal and Ayanda is keen to stay up as late as possible because, as she tells me—while fighting off the advances of the Irish dude—she’s shooting a music video in the afternoon and she wants to looks as “sad and rough as possible.”

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You can see the results above in the video for “La Lorna,” a simple and apt rendition of the song produced by Thor Rixon, with keys by Louis Pienaar and Ayanda on vocals. Plaintive, resolute, "La Lorna" builds layers of vocals around a tale of breakup, longing, and resistance. It's a study in unwrapping emotional rawness. Ayanda is not a jobbing musician but rather, a recently graduated art student with a firm interest in music, who sometimes sings. She didn’t plan to make the song but it came about quite organically. Currently she has no plans to release more music, and is focussing on travelling and her art works.

The catalyst for the track was Rixon a skinny, dreadlocked producer and all around weirdo. His two EPs, Shared Folder and Tea Time Favorites, are remarkable collaborative works possessed of an odd naiveté that sums up the headspace of naas—a collective which he co-founded. Currently naas publishes Platform which was founded last year and has since grown to be a hub that shines a light on South Africa’s youth culture and music, but most recently naas has launched a music agency too.

South African music is currently going through a particularly fertile period, aided, obviously by the internet, but mostly because a younger set of South African musicians are no longer concerned what international audiences think. Anxiety over worldwide recognition has long plagued even the country's most assured artists, but with the umswenko moves (a term similar to swag, but more slick, and well, South African) of Boyzn Bucks, RikyRick, Cassper Nyovest, Okmalumkoolkat, these Joburg based music makers play with beats and language—mixing English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, and various South African slang terms—in ways that are hard to contextualize to the casual outside observer. With thisa new robust confidence seems to have also overtaken South African music, and naas is riding with this wave, inspiring collaborations with artists both on and off label.

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As fellow co-founder Ian McNair says, “The world doesn't want to see Southern Africans spewing their own culture back at them, at least not without a sincerely local edge to it. But I also think that the local audience is less bashful and embarrassed of seeing itself reflected in art.”

Speaking of this new paradigm of music making Ayanda notes, “I think the energy has definitely shifted. There is a group of individuals in our pop culture that are not afraid to be different and completely submerge themselves in creating. Sometimes I’ll be chilling and will get a call to come hang out and we’ll just end up making music and playing around with whatever comes off the top of our vibes. The process of just being together, in a space and playing around with sounds and ideas is definitely the core of where it’s coming from.”

Run by Rixon, McNair, and Matt Rightford, naas came about, according to Rightford, “because we were in a kak [very] weird band and having the best time making videos and various promo content. We realized that we had a knack for it and figured it would be pretty rad to make a living out of doing what we were good at and enjoyed.”

Soon enough they started hosting events, putting out compilations (see the end of this piece for links to said comps), producing videos, publishing Platform, and eventually settling into the idea of running a label. Naas operates in a very specific headspace summed up by one of the artists they represent, Maramza: “They’re really sweet, they’re weird guys, with weird haircuts, and they're all really tall.”

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On a slightly more serious note, Smiso Zwane, a.k.a. Okmalumkoolkat adds, “They're actually some of the easiest energies to work with, [they have a] laid-back attitude, but they’re on time with precision.” The name naas is a play on the South African pronunciation of "nice," but this way of saying nice is often ironic and jokey, gently mocking of the way South African’s speak.

This sweetness comes through when I ask McNair what kind of musicians they're keen to work with. “Most importantly they need to be serious about their art. It's got to be what they live for, even if it's not what they live off. Musically we tend to work with people who make (mostly) electronic or electronic hybrid music that's explorative and interesting. The music MUST be authentic—it must come from a place of absolute sincerity.”

Rixon takes up the thread: “We always emphasize friendliness and kindness with all of our dealings as we don't see the point in being horrible people doing awesome stuff—that usually ruins a product if you find out that the person who created it is a terrible person. Always be friendly, always be professional.”

Along with Amy Ayanda and Thor Rixon’s video, below are two of naas’ latest releases, which sum up their ethos perfectly.

CARD ON SPOKES - “ON THE LOW” FT. OKMALUMKOOKAT & NONKU PHIRI

"In The Low" is bright and breezy meander through the beginnings of a relationship—two people checking each other from opposite sides of the room—told via the smooth, deep house vocals of Nonku Phiri and the pop culture loaded flow of Okamalumkoolkat, whose references are both hyper local and ardently international. Meanwhile the swirling electronica comes courtesy of Card on Spokes.

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Ostensibly, Card On Spokes is the electronic project of jazz musician Shane Cooper, who's played Carnegie Hall as part of South African jazz rebels Kesivan and The Lights, and whose debut album, Oscillations, won a 2014 SAMA (South African Music Award) for Best Jazz Album. The song itself came about through a series of experiments at the 2013 Red Bull ZA Bass Camp.

“Okamalumkoolkat had written his verses on top of an old unreleased track of mine," says Cooper, elaborating on the song's genesis. "That night while partying downstairs at a club, I found Nonku and we went to the studio upstairs and she came up with the chorus. Months later I decided the instrumental wasn't sexy enough for the vocals so I wrote a new track to better fit their lyrics and mood.”

Okamalumkoolkat continues: “I get a mail a month later, and the beat wasn't [what] I had recorded on but it made me sound zuper suave so it's a winner. I had written the first four bars: ''When I found her, her ex Chris Browned her, heavy in the dwelms, almost Bobby Browned her,' a couple of years back. Classic story of transitioning from the friend-zone to the love-mat."

MARAMZA – “CUT THE CAKE” FT. MOONCHILD

Bass heavy and playful, a mix of kwaito vocals and jacking house, "Cut The Cake" is smooth embodiment of what’s going down on SA dancefloors right now and features the arresting vocals of Moonchild—whose video we premiered to acclaim earlier this year.

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"Deep house isn't pop music, it's jazzy and the tracks are really long and it's all about soulfulness and not fucking and taking / selling drugs, which most pop music is about," says Maramza. "Our deep house guys are superstars.”

Talking of the current South African music scene Maramza says, “The new hip-hop revolution is a Wu-Tang Clan kinda thing: a crew of guys making gully, don't-give-a-fuck, fresh to death hip-hop and everybody wants to be a part of it."

What does Maramza predict for the future? Well, being a dystopian son of a bitch he says: “More war, there's always war, maybe another world war. Cape Town will be swallowed by the sea. We will all be Zulu Compuras as Okmalumkoolkat says—laptops coming out of our chests. Women will get stronger, more dominant, men will get weaker, more house-husbands. There will be some great new drugs—drugs to make you forget things permanently, drugs to make you work in your sleep, drugs to make you attractive to certain people. There will be an option to go to sleep until you die, and live in your dreams and nightmares.”

Check out some of naas' compilations from the past 12 months:

Slip-Slop || P.S. Bar || Dassie || Laaitie

Roger Young is a music and culture writer and filmmaker living in Cape Town. Follow him on Twitter.