Musical pioneer to tell story of hip hop in SA
Cultural historian and former B-boy Emile YX is looking for funds to complete his new project – Making a Black Noise, writes Nontando Mposo
THELATE 1980s and early 1990s are described as the golden age of mainstream hip hop music. American hip hop legends such as Black Sheep, Arrested Development, A Tribe Called Quest, The Roots, LL Cool J and Salt-N-Pepa ruled the game and produced numerous hit songs that still get people on the dance floor.
In South Africa, the hip hop culture was almost non-existent for a number of reasons, including the apartheid regime’s clampdown on people’s access to information and exposure to the outside world.
However, on the Cape Flats, a hip hop movement was growing, brought to life by groups of B-boy dance crews and rappers. At the forefront of this was Emile Lester Jansen, aka Emile YX, the creator of B-boy group Black Noise, one of the oldest hip hop crews still active in South Africa.
“My love for dance began in the late 1980s when I used to emulate the Michael Jackson dance moves and I also started learning break-dancing. Before that I was very much into skateboarding and roller skating,” says Jansen.
“I grew up in Grassy Park, which a lot of people don’t consider as the Cape Flats, but it’s also an extremely strong neighbourhood with lots of the parents working more than one job to survive.
“Luckily for me, I grew up in a musical family and used to listen to music from my father’s collection, which included a mixture of the types of music – from Elvis Presley, the white king of rock, to BB King. And occasionally I would get access to Abdullah Ibrahim and a lot of Cape Flats music.”
Over weekends, young people from Gugulethu to Mitchells Plain, Manenberg, Khayelitsha, Nyanga and Hanover Park, would get together for dance battles and to exchange music news, says Jansen.
“Hip hop provided an outlet for many frustrated youth who during the week were taking part in political-related protests. Cape Town became a melting pot for new ideas and culture.
“We would meet people from overseas who were into hip hop and would show us some cool dance moves and articles. At that time there was no internet or many pictures explaining all the dance moves.
“They would show us all these moves and we would copy the moves… that is how we learnt,” he says.
“We used to travel to town to dance and at one stage we couldn’t walk in groups because of the Group Areas Act (a law designed to restrict black or coloured race groups to specific residential and trading areas). All these things were happening during apartheid, but at the same time people were living their lives, playing soccer, going to movies, falling in love and we were break-dancing.”
Jansen is working on his fourth book, Making a Black Noise, that will tell the history of the South African hip hop movement since early 1982, but needs help.
He also heads up the Heal the Hood project, a community-based volunteer organisation that aims to uplift youth on the Cape Flats through a range of programmes, including counselling, music and dance workshops and cultural exchanges.
“The Cape Flats has been stereotyped as a gang- and drug-ridden community, while the majority of the people living in it are good people. We have noticed that many young people internalise the stereotype created by biased media which perpetuate this image from apartheid racist years.
“The book is so important to me, not only for me writing my story but for others who were involved in the hip hop movement to tell their own stories as well. I feel like there is no documentation of what happened back then. We have some video footage but to get it out to the masses of people to understand what it was really like, we are going to require some help,” he explains.
“It was an interesting time for all the people who were involved in the (hip hop) culture.
“It was amazing how young people had the desire to be exposed to something different, like art, that you didn’t normally find on the Cape Flats. I feel that there is a huge amount of kids that are still doing what we were doing back in the day, but there isn’t necessarily big media attention around it.
“Hopefully this project will get people to speak about those projects,” says Jansen.
He is also planning to compile a documentary that will feature people’s experiences of seeing Black Noise perform locally, nationally and internationally.
“I once saw footage of the Pop Glide Crew (some of whose members went on to form Black Noise) break-dancing at Muizenberg Civic being played at a Checkers store in Claremont, but could never find the person who owned it.
“This type of footage is priceless and ultimately I wish to create a museum of the work that we have been doing, that can be accessed by locals and the increasing number of visitors interested in our hip hop history.
“I have interviewed many people over the years and wish to have everyone tell their own stories,” says Jansen.
Last year, the Heal the Hood project hosted the “Cape Flats Film Festival”, which showcased positive films about the Cape Flats to the people of the Cape Flats.
“A lot of people perceive hip hop in a negative way, that it promotes a derogatory attitude, but they never ask what else is available.
“They are not aware that there is hip hop with positive messages, but because of the popularity of mainstream music it is hard to access,” says Jansen.
People interested in participating in this documentation of hip hop in South Africa, can contact Jansen at 082 395 8125, at emileyx@gmail.com or connect via Emile YX? Facebook page, or contact the Heal The Hood office on 021 706 0481.
My love for dance began in the late 1980s when I used to emulate the Michael Jackson dance moves