POP GO THE WIZARDS
A Capetonian knob-twiddler and a former car guard from Rwanda are off to bamboozle Barcelona, writes Simon Shear
JOHN Wizards’ new album becomes irresistible by the second track — Lusaka by Night —a jubilant, looping Afropop riff leading to claps, clicks, shudders, whirring synths and vocals with a subtle, joyous edge.
Lusaka by Night, Muizenberg , iYongwe. If these were songs by, say, Vampire Weekend, we might see the titles as exotic emblems, as gesturing whimsically towards an idea of Africa.
But speaking to John Withers, the brains behind South Africa’s most interesting new band, it quickly becomes clear that the music tracks the concrete and personal.
Lusaka by Night is a nightclub Withers saw while travelling in Tanzania. “I was struck by the name,” he says, and wrote a song inspired by the journey, looking back at a moment that “reminded me of a time in my life”.
Lusaka by Night’s original lyrics, sung by Withers, told the story of that journey. They’ve been substituted on the album by vocalist Emmanuel Nzaramba’s verse.
The meeting of Nzaramba and Withers is already a mini legend. Nzaramba, who is from Rwanda, was working as a car guard outside a Cape Town coffee shop. Withers had a guitar on his back and Nzaramba struck up a conversation about music.
Nzaramba had come to South Africa hoping to play music — but reality inter- vened and, like so many pushed to our country by a mixture of hope and despair, he found himself doing menial work.
It was a lucky meeting for them both. Nzaramba’s vocals lend the band not just polish but a warmth and charisma for which there isn’t yet a Pro Tools preset.
It’s a nice counterpoint to Withers’ introspective drawl, which features on most of the album.
When the band started touring, Nzaramba had to forfeit his refugee status to secure his passport. He has been back to Rwanda lately, moving between family members while trying to secure the documents he needs to apply for a Schengen visa, and visited SA last week to play the Design Indaba.
That visa will be useful in May, when the band play Primavera Sound in Barcelona, one of the world’s premier music festivals.
So who does Withers look forward to meeting in Barcelona? With impressive nonchalance, he tells me he hasn’t really looked at the lineup. Perhaps only in Cape Town could a freshly successful muso be so casual about sharing a bill with Nicolas Jaar, Kendrick Lamar and Arcade Fire.
Withers says he enjoys live performances, and that his bandmates contribute their own energy to the show. But in the studio, it’s him, alone, writing and producing. “It’s an insular, solitary process.”
So when the Primavera website says that John Wizards is part of an emerging African electronic music scene, is that just PR hype?
“It’s probably mainly PR hype,” Withers concedes. He insists that Cape Town has a “very good, very exciting” music scene. But he feels his music is motivated by personal influences and recollections. “African music forms the majority of what I listen to.”
In the video for Muizenberg , disembodied bathers in freefloating geometric patterns produce a kind of Afro-designism that feels like a hip antidote to Afro-kitsch, followed by some free floating beachtime whimsy. The video is by Sebastian Borckenhagen, a friend of the band who also designed the John Wizards album cover.
Withers says that he is often presented with pitches for videos and promotional material, and “invariably ideas are naive, or fetishised as being ‘African’.” With Borckenhagen, “it’s nice to have a friend who I trust to do whatever he wants”.
Withers expresses surprise that many interviewers have fixated on his day job: writing music for television adverts. Fair enough, but I still want to know which ads to listen out for — and maybe catch a hint of John Wizards.
“Oh, jeez,” Withers says. He will only volunteer an Oros commercial. I don’t press him; if the band’s success endures, it can be the job of a musical archaeologist with time on his hands to excavate the rest.
It’s an eclectic blend of styles and tropes, ricocheting across space — around Africa and beyond — and through the decades. It’s not pastiche but a brilliant collage: this shimmering variousness is a hallmark of the Wizards sound.
This could be a limitation; even personal stories can start to sound second-hand when told in a language not fully your own.
But the John Wizards album takes that risk and wins: it is utterly distinctive. I can’t wait to see where Withers goes next.