Black Coffee almost cost me a plane ticket. Last September, as I was full-on sprinting through the Johannesburg airport to narrowly make my flight back to New York, I passed a record store blaring the most warmly gorgeous house music I’d ever heard. Hooking a sharp right into the store, I yelped, “Who is this?” and flung my dusty camping backpack on the counter, rifling for stray rand to shove at the bewildered cashier.
“Black Coffee,” he replied, fishing a CD from a bin. “He’s our best.”
A year later, the clerk is still right, and the joyous immediacy of discovering Black Coffee hasn’t faded. The record playing in that store, Pieces of Me, is leading a thrilling new wave of South African house; it’s a minimal, graceful dance effort that pairs soulful vocals with bright, Afropolitan polyrhythms and futurist jazz. Since its release last fall on Black Coffee’s own Soulistic label, it’s been a breakout success for the 40-year-old DJ-producer born Nathi Maphumulo, netting him sets at Coachella and Ultra as well as the BET Awards’ Best International Act: Africa accolade. (Even Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa, was impressed by the latter.) Last month, Pieces of Me finally got its stateside release (via Ultra Music). It’s only fitting, seeing as Maphumulo—who was raised in the Umlazi township outside Durban—now splits his time between Los Angeles and Johannesburg.
“It's been a treat to expose our music and our culture to the world on this level,” he said backstage at New York’s Full Moon Festival last month. “The African rhythm, even when it's not obvious, is in our music. I think our responsibility now is to make sure that it goes to the mainstage, and it's not pigeonholed to ‘world music’ or put on smaller stages as ‘world music artists.’ We can be where everyone is.”
After a decade of building momentum in his homeland, Black Coffee has plenty of international stages booked for fall; he’s touring America and England, and will open two nights for Beyoncé in Durban in November. (He’s also joining Puff Daddy in the studio to work on the rapper’s next album.) Before Maphumulo hit the road again, he offered us a quick rundown on South African house, past and present.
Fresh House Flavor 1
Founded in 1994, the Afro-house and deep-house label House Afrika remains one of the most respected dance names in South Africa. “House Afrika was the label and record store that was imparting the music. Their first successful album,Fresh House Flavor 1, is our house-music scripture,” Maphumulo said of DJ Fresh’s 1998 compilation featuring international artists like Mood II Swing, Shèna, Romanthony, and more. “I remember the first time hearing it, I thought, ‘It’s too fast.’ But later on, it was one of my favorite albums. These are our classics; the beginning of our house music is this album.”
DJ Oskido
Black Coffee’s mentor is ubiquitous in South Africa: He cofounded Kalawa Jazzmee Records, an independent label that specializes in Kwaito dance music (a fusion of hip-hop, house, regional African rhythms, and reggae), and is a popular radio DJ on the Metro FM channel. The Johannesburg resident’s “Church Grooves” mixes rank among South Africa’s most popular dance series, and often nod to early Chicago DJs like Frankie Knuckles and Little Louie Vega. Oskido also founded the Southern African Music Conference, an annual showcase for new artists.
“Oskido started doing this whole DJ thing before we all did, and started a record label and developed artists and basically created a scene before any of us,” Maphumulo said. “He worked out my career. He gave me a record deal, because when I first came out, my approach was different: I had an album of remixes when no one was really doing that. Most people heard that and were like, ‘Who will buy an album of remixes? They know the songs already.’ But I believed in it, and so did he. He’s been an inspiration.”
DJ Kent
In terms of his local house contemporaries, Maphumulo is quick to point to DJ Kent, who was born in Soweto and is also now based in Johannesburg. “He’s one of the biggest DJs in the country, a guy I started with,” he said. Kent rose through the South African dance in the mid-2000s with his former production group, Kentphonik, and won a South African Music Award for his 2008 debut album, Mixing Business with Pleasure Reloaded, a dense yet buoyant fusion of house, soul, and lounge styles. His light, playful touch was well-received at the 2010 World Cup in his homeland, for which he produced music, while his sonic eulogy for Nelson Mandela (above) is a sweeping, timeless tearjerker.
Da Capo
Signed to Black Coffee’s Soulistic Music, this Limpopo-born DJ-producer specializes in delicately galvanizing house music. He released an excellent debut album, Surreal Selections Vol. 1, in 2014, and is a fixture on the South African festival circuit; he’ll play Johannesburg’s Spring Fiesta 2016 in October.
Da Capo’s prolific stream of online mixes has earned him a sizable following and a South African Music Award nomination for Best Dance Album, though his proclivities lean heavily orchestral and pop. “What he does is really hard to explain. It’s house music but it's beautiful, man,” Maphumulo said. “He’d been making music before, and I always thought he needed some guidance, like how I got some guidance. When you make music and there's no structure, you just give music away for free, which makes you popular but then there's no business. He's also so good at remixing—he’s got his own Afro touch.”