10 Jun 2013

Disc jockeying (Dj) craft has been hailed as one of the genres with a huge potential to blossom if only it can be given enough encouragement.

This was uttered by Kabo ‘Dj K-Nice’ Mogotsi, one of the judges recently over the weekend at the regional President’s Day competitions in Ghanzi.

The Dj category is the newly introduced genre under the Contemporary music.

Although most djs are upcoming, Dj K-Nice says they are promising and just need a push to make it.

He appealed for encouragement saying that is a motivation and it will help in building the young djs’ careers.

However, K-Nice notes that they are still behind in the technique of mixing and blending the sounds.

He also says djs too like any stage performer should always interact with their crowd.

“A dj uses stunts and takes the song to the audience,” he states further saying they also should have eye contact and be intimate with their audience rather than the equipment because that could kill the performance.

The competing djs were from the western region. With an abundance of local music one would have thought one of the djs will play a local tune.

But, all of them played South African music in their sets.

Popular was Mahoota vs Vetkoek’s Orlando which features Dr Malinga; every one of them either started or ended their set with.

Dj Ganyani’s latest offering Xicubu was also featured especially by Ghanzi based djs, as well as Professor, Uhuru, Dj Sbu, and the Swedish House Mafia’s Don’t Worry Child.

Explaining why they are not able to play local tunes, Dj Gops who has seven years experience in the game says it is a case of copyright.

“Botswana artists demand reward from us if we use their songs in our sets,” he says.

Dj K-Nice concurs with him saying they need royalties and it is very hard for upcoming Djs to pay as they are still trying to make a name for themselves, hence end up using South African music which is again popular among the audience.

He also says the other reason is because locally there are not many house tunes which almost every Dj plays in their set.

Nevertheless, he advises Djs to have a relationship with artists and also says they should work on learning to sample local songs to up their game and be different from the rest.

Only position one and two from each region will compete at the finals, and the winner takes P10 000.

At regional level, winners do not get price money but position three and four get P800 and P500 respectively. ENDS