“The industry‘s interaction with rookies is like a girl’s interaction with the guy standing at the bar: They want you to seduce them with your skills. If their friends don’t feel you, they won’t run the risk of standing up for you by themselves.”

He grabs his CD case and sets up while the lights in the club are still on. He orders a drink, chats to the bar ladies and heads over to the box to start his set.

As he heads back, I ask him if he’s getting paid. “Yeah, some kind of compensation helps, but either way, I always want to play. Johannesburg is more forgiving when it comes to giving us cash, but my hustle in Durban was exactly that, a hustle.”

I know a deejay that conceptualized a track in the morning, recorded it in the afternoon and mastered it before midnight every Wednesday. He would upload the link onto twitter and within minutes, he had hundreds of people downloading it. Each week brought in better numbers and then it just faded. I asked him why he stopped and he said “I spend so much of my time trying to hustle, to get my sound and talent out there, but I can’t keep doing it for free. I have bills to pay and upgrading equipment doesn’t come cheap.”

His dedication to the industry was admirable, but the instinct of survival always seems to prevail over passion.

The industry‘s interaction with rookies is like a girl’s interaction with the guy standing at the bar: They want you to seduce them with your skills. If their friends don’t feel you, they won’t run the risk of standing up for you by themselves. The more other girls respond to you, the more they want you. And once you have gone through all the trouble to impress them, they hug you, give you a kiss if you’re lucky and then leave you to do something else that will make you interesting again.

It’s a fickle industry, but one that is so important. Music carries a message of personal identity and it’s connected to friends and happiness. These are things every human craves.

The Deejays that stand out are deejays who not only play commercial music, but music that is relevant and in sync with the crowd’s vibe. Feeling the personality and spunk of the deejay himself is like getting a glimpse of his heart. He starts his set and the skin breaks free to allow us into that cavity and the next thing we know, we are dancing to the beat of his soul.

What I have learnt is: for every commercial deejay playing at a gig for 20 grand, there are 5 underground deejays filling clubs downtown, playing for cab money.

The brave and ambitious proceed to hustle, regardless of how many early sets they get. The dance floor is empty but his love for the art fills the space. He might not have a following of 50 000 on twitter, but that doesn’t make him any less of a deejay.

South Africa’s music scene has evolved. There is a refreshing sound in the airwaves, but it could be better. I love it when rookies no longer have to hide under the word “underground”. When a deejay is celebrated because he understands the crowd, regardless of his commercial status. That’s the essence of music after all: bringing different people together for the same feeling.

WORDS: Star Khulu