The rhyming drummer

‘When I was young I used to play beats on the desk and rap Eminem lyrics to those, and then when I got to South Peninsula High School I went to the music room and then I was like, “Can I play drums?”

Music seems to be encoded into Marlon Witbooi’s DNA. You can see it in his versatility, how he straddles genres and milieus. A hard-driving gig with Mabuta one night, and a night in the studio the next, laying down a rap verse with unpredictable, witty flows.

Born in 1991, Witbooi was raised on what he calls crossover jazz: “your Lionel Ritchie, Simply Red, Incognito and so on. It was when I went to UCT [University of Cape Town] that I discovered bebop.”

Witbooi was not entirely floored by the more intricate music. “I wasn’t fully invested in that style of music but I knew what it could do for me as a player to open up to that kind of music. The only programme they offer is jazz. You have to learn what they teach you and, while you are there, learn other styles of music. As a working musician, you need to be versatile.”

He spent much his time at UCT anchoring the university’s big band under lecturer Mike Campbell.

After graduation in 2014 and hitting the jamming scene at Swingers, which Witbooi considers a school, his recording career picked up in earnest. Some of his early credits include singer Melanie Scholtz’s Our Time (produced by Bokani Dyer in 2013), Bokani Dyer’s World Music (2015) and the Marcus Wyatt-led ZAR Orchestra’s One Night in the Sun album.

“There are lots of good jazz players in Cape Town. They can play jazz well but, anything else, not so well. Jo’burg has more versatile players. You get put in positions where you learn at the gig. Cape Town, doesn’t put you in a position where you are out of your comfort zone. Here you can move from an Afrikaans gig to a pop gig to a festival gig and to a reggae gig.”

But he believes Cape Town, perhaps driven by the vital programme at the university, will fare just fine without him. There is still work and many young people coming up because of it.

Witbooi’s itinerary has involved being part of the house band for the talent search show The Voice for two seasons (2016 and 2017) and part of the Coke Studio house band, which is somewhat incongruous, but he is fulfilling his mission in the City of Gold and staying true to his closely held eclecticism.

The eclecticism offers him a form of controlled power, not too dissimilar from his approach to the drums on the recently released Mabuta album, Welcome to This World, on which Witbooi not only plays within tight grooves but also colours them with charismatic intuition.

If you search for Witbooi on YouTube, clips of his collaborations with the likes of bassist Benjamin Jephta will come up, but a lone video on his newly launched channel will perhaps offer the final word on his limitless possibilities.

Footage in black and white of Witbooi (going as @makes_blvd) rapping to a mic stand illustrates some of his forthcoming endeavours.

Half-a-dozen tracks with production duties from fellow musos Shane Cooper and Bokani Dyer are slated for release over the next seven months. Judging by the first snippet, expect an exhibition of the voice treated as a percussive instrument.

But also witness the portrait of a young man come full circle from his days of banging beats on his school desk and rapping Eminem rhymes.

Magugu’s work is influenced by the academic environment he and his peers have occupied. Consumers may not have caught on yet but his collections are named after university subjects.

“When I felt the need to escape into the great outdoors for Spring/Summer 2017, my collection, Geology, was born. When I was fed up with all the expectations placed on women in the country this past season, Home Economics was born. When I stayed in Johannesburg CBD for Spring/ Summer 2016, Social Sciences was born.”

In his Home Economics collection, Magugu addresses misogyny and the yoke of domestication, motherhood, chastity and the beauty standards imposed on women.

“The colours remind one of chemicals that reacted badly with one another — magnesium purples, highin-alkaline pinks with sulphuric brights — which speak of the hostile environment women find themselves in,” he says in the essay accompanying the collection.

The same goes for Geology, which was prompted by the need to encourage women to escape the noise and pressures of urban life by exploring the outdoors.

The collection speaks of South Africa’s land issue. In the lookbook, women are draped in browns, reds, golds and blue hues that suggests their connection to the sandy landscape and open skies.

The models are seen in wide-open fields playing childhood games such as rope jumping or kgathi. Magugu plans to continue taking the world’s issues and create everyday armour for women. He will also use his brand to oppose corruption in fashion.

“There are so many young, brilliant designers who really need funding and support and, instead, all that seems to go to greedy gatekeepers who don’t want to let a younger generation of designers flourish,” he says.

“I can only but strive for excellence from myself and encourage my peers to do so, because true authenticity will always come to the fore and be recognised, despite limited resources.”