Major League DJz contain Covid-19 effects

LICKING their wounds isn’t on the cards for Major League DJz as they continue to feel the disruption the Covid-19 pandemic has caused on event planners and organisers.

No-one throws a party like identical twins Banele and Bandile Mbere, known as musical duo Major League DJz. Planning events has been in their blood since high school.

The Joburg social calendar would not be complete without their hip-hop and house music festival Major League Gardens that has featured headliners Cassper Nyovest, Riky Rick and Davido.

While the 30-year-old stars admit to have taken a knock like many event organisers, they are not staying down.

“To have that income not coming in has been tough. Sure we have done online stuff, but it’s not as much money as the festivals would have done,” Bandile admits.

To combat for the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, they have started a YouTube web-series Amapiano Live Balcony Mix Africa that sees them performing live sets.

Since its inception last year, the web-series has featured guest appearances by Kabza De Small and Mr JazziQ.

The episode with Kabza De Small has been viewed over 447k times since debuting a week ago, while the one with Mr JazziQ is sitting on 532k views after two weeks.

“That has been a sensation for us and it got a lot of sponsors involved. With the second wave, we are not opening it to other artists in the amapiano space,” Bandile says.

“The web-series is very big internationally. YouTube is a great platform that can show you how to do things different,” Banele adds.

In 2014, the duo decided to pursue music full-time. Since then they have dominated airwaves and digital music platforms, collaborating with big-name artists such as Nasty C, Nyovest, Focalistic, Moonchild, Holly Rey and Kamo Mphela.

In the lockdown period they have been working on lots of music, resulting in the release of two projects last year – Pianochella! and What’s The Levol. Smash hits Le Plane E’Landile and Dinaledi have kept South Africans moving. “The only way to perform is on the charts, so the more music we put out the better,” Bandile says.

“Since we are not performing like we used to, we can’t even judge how big our songs are.

“The only thing you can do is make music and hope that it performs well on the charts,” Banele continues.

The pair grew up in a very musical family. Their late father Dr Aggrey Mbere, a pianist and politician, was a childhood friend of Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa.

“We have always been around music, with jazz playing in the background every day. We started with piano lessons at a very young age,” Banele says.

“In high school we used to do a lot of events. We used to throw after-parties for a lot of international acts that used to come to SA.

“After finishing high school we started thinking what’s going to happen when DJs stop coming to our parties and that’s when we started playing as DJs.”—