kagablog

lance stehr: It all happened by mistake. My name is Lance Stehr and I’ve been involved in the record industry for the last fifteen years. Started off initially working in tv and always had this thing about wanting to produce music and wanting to ge tinvolved with artists and expose South African music to the rest of the world. For about seven years we concentrated on one artist and that was Prophets of Da City which we managed to get out internationally and we toured Europe and did a lot things with them but it was more on a political level that we were focused then and then we decided when we came back from Europe in 1996 that we should look at other commercial music forms that were happening. It was our decision then to have a bash at kwaito. We actually didn’t really like kwaito at all at the time. We were more into hip hop, because at that time for us kwaito actually the lyrics that were happening were very repetitive, we didn’t find the music exciting at all, and in hip hop there were just more lyrics and there were just more things that you could say. And then we started with the first group called Skeem and we recorded them and we took Ishmael who was in Prophets of Da City, put him in Skeem and the main reason why Skeem was formed was because Ishmael was supporting his friends and it got to the stage where we said well your friends have got to do something and he said well why don’t we just get a kwaito group together with them and that’s actually how Skeem was born. Skeem came out with a track called Waar Was Jy? which actually went to number one and all of a sudden we found ourselves right in the mainstream of commercial music in South Africa and we’re very lucky because we followed up Skeem with O Da Meesta, a track called Wena U Bani? which went huge and it was all very fresh and exciting and we neglected Prophets of Da City, they actually went on a backburner and we decided to actually look at a lot of other groups and the label just suddenly burst out with about seven eight groups which we were very stupid in doing in terms of not focusing at all and we sit now with some very hot talents happening and over the last three years we’ve maanged to discover, manage, record and market new talent out to the rest of the country.

aryan kaganof: Such as?

lance stehr: Well we were very fortunate in looking at Zola. But Zola had approached us a year before but he had these huge fat dreads and the huge fat dreads for me it was a problem and the music which he was doing at the time, which was hip hop, was a problem, because we knew that in South Africa hip hop just doesn’t have the sales that kwaito has. And then when he auditioned for Yizo Yizo, cos we had done the soundtrack for Yizo Yizo, we were looking at taking an actor from Yizo Yizo and blowing them up. So in the middle of auditions we discovered Zola and Zola arrived, the same person, with no dreads, and this sort of really amazing energy, and although I can’t understand one word of Zulu, so people tell me, amazing lyrics. In the end it’s very difficult because you’re feeling the music you’re n ot understanding the lyrics and you just have to go with the feel of it. We’re fortuinate because I’d rate Zola as one of the best writers in the country. And then from Zola we did Mapaputsi which blew up as well which was great because that was also fresh, a fresh sound as well, and Mzeke Zeke. So for the last two years we’ve really had a good run. And it’s very difficult in this industry because the industry is really competitive and I think it’s like that globally in different regions where yoyu’ll only have X amount of artists selling records. You won’t have fifty aritsts selling records you’ll only have maybe four that are selling, that are actually bringing in the amount of money that you need to keep a record company going. This last year we were fortunate because we had three huge artists. We’re also fortunate now because we’ve got a new act called Matswako and it’s changing direction slightly because it’s not kwaito at all, it’s more a mixture of classical meets house meets African and it sounds amazing.

aryan kaganof: What influence did Yizo Yizo have on the development of kwaito?

lance stehr: I think that Yizo Yizo dealt with a lot of issues that people weren’t really prepared to talk about, especially at school. Whether it was sex, drugs, etc. I don’t think in terms of Yizo Yizo the lyrics really depicted that, I think it was more when Zola came out with his solo album that’s when he really hit it hard. And most probably made the character Papa Action, which he played, sort of like expanded from that and lyrically just sort of blew it up from there.

aryan kaganof: How is Ghetto Ruff different from the majors, like Gallo, EMI etc.

lance stehr: I think Ghetto Ruff as a small independent record company operates on a very different level to majors. I’ve had a long association with majors and the feeling is always yo9u’re much closer to the street and you’re much closer to the artists and also the artist’s well-being in terms of if the guy hasn’t got any place to stay, or the guy hasn’t got any food you actually there and you try and build the artist at the same time as building the music. Also I just feel that independent record companies more or less live the music and it’s sort of a life style, you’re surrounded with the music like 24 hours a day. I think it’s very easy in a major record company to be very comfortable, be an executive and have your office, you knoiw that you’ve got your meetings at this and this time and you actually lose a lot of catches because if you’re not listening to every single track that comes in which the majors just don’t have time for they’re looking at that huge machine that they’re trying tofeed all the time and the thing is just to get the product out there and to sell that volume. I’m very fortunate that the people that work with us and the partners we have, Ready D, KB, Zola, they are very in tune with the youth and ideas are always bounced around. And also if you’re fortunate enough to have ears that everybody else feels the same, it’s not like having special ears, there’s no bullshit like you have special ears to find a hit, it’s just having normal ears that you can hear wow this sounds amazing, I think another two million people will appreciate it. That’s the way we operate.

The music industry is notorious for hype and I think the hype actually extends to other areas as well, every record company wants to shift those units so what tends to happen is the hype is just so big that you give your buyers that they stock it in really huge believing that this is going to sell because in actual fact a lot of the buiyers donb’t have ears, they will sit there and they will believe what the record company tells them. What happens at the end of it is if the record doesn’t sell at all a lot of that stock is returned and it’s unfortunate because for me it doesn’t matter how much you can hype a song it’s about the song itself. You can do the hype, you can run around and tell everybody how brilliant this is and it can be spread all over the shops and that but if the song isn’t there that people want you’re not going to move those units out of the store at all.

aryan kaganof: What about taking kwaito into the rest of Africa as well as the rest of the world?

lance stehr: Kwaito has already gone over the borders, in Zimbabwe there is a huge market over there, even in Zambia and in Botswana. There have been kwaito concerts that have happened in London in Germany, Zola has done concerts over there, because there are a lot of South Africans that live all over the world and there are a lot of Africans that live all over the world. The crossover effect in terms of getting it into the mainstream by which I mean selling more than 25 000 copies in the German or Dutch markets, I think there is going to have to be some more work done to it. There are certain tracks at the moment that can do it, but it’s not strictly kwaito, it’s not your generic kwaito in terms of what is selling here. I think that we’re going to have to do some collaborations with different artists and that is actually what is going to break it into different territories. I think that all genres of music have got a lifespan as that particular genre and then they evolve, like you’ll still have kwela, which comes from sixty years ago, it’s still there, there are different strands of it but it has evolved in the same way that kwaito is going to evolve people are going to merge it with hip hop. At the moment the hip hop scene in South Africa is blowing up. It’s not blowing up in terms of sales but the market is ready for hip hop and we’ve been trying to sell hip hop in South Africa for the last fifteen years and it’s only now that it’s working out. Strangely the hip hop heads would rather listen to it on the radio or tape it from someone’s else’s cd but on the kwaito side people actually go out and buy the music. So the two genres are coming together. It’s interesting because on Zola’s album we had one or two hip hop tracks which were huge and the more sort of Zulu rap, that is acutally what is happening, not your English rap.

aryan kaganof: What do you think about the distribution deal Arthur cut with Gallo recently?

lance stehr: Arthur’s always been distributed by a major (EMI) so this isn’t a new thing at all, I think all the independents have to go through a major to get distributed. I feel very sad because I don’t think that it really worked out for Gallo as they wanted it to work out because he didn’t have any tracks over the Christmas period so there’s nothing that’s actually happening there, but you never know, his next hit might just be around the corner and he’ll bounce back again. I think it’s another business decision that’s been made on the level where they threw a lot of money down the drain. There’s nothing really that you can gain from a major record company except a ton of money. Otherwise msuically, sure they have a lot of muscle in certain areas, but a lot of the muscle they just buy.