Doctor wants to put the beat into healing
A SOUTH African psychiatrist is combining his love of music and medicine to help troubled teenagers.
By day, Dr Molefi Mathe is a psychiatrist specialising in treating children and teenagers in Manchester in the UK. By night, he is DJ Levi Love, playing in clubs.
Mathe, who was born in Sebokeng in Gauteng, is back in South Africa for three weeks to visit his family and launch his debut album.
With him is Tom Greaves, also known as DJ Tom Boogizm. The pair are determined to get support for their sixweek programme to beat addiction and delinquency.
Mathe said he wanted to “get local youth off the streets” — even those on nyaope, a mixture of dagga and anything MUSIC MAESTROS: Dr Molefi Mathe (DJ Levi Love) and Tom Greaves (DJ Tom Boogizm) from heroin to rat poison.
The doctor, who has researched how to help youngsters, said: “When people try to quit something, they need a crutch, and we want music to be that crutch.”
The pair are due to have a meeting with the Department of Arts and Culture next week to apply for funding.
Their Bambanani programme would “demonstrate existing theory and research to support the notion of music therapy playing a vital role in the rehabilitation of conduct disorder patients and children with emotional and behavioural difficulties”, said Mathe.
“During the programme we will identify . . . what each child would like to gain from the programme and how they would like to contribute in their preferred role, whether it be DJ, musician, promoter, events organiser. They’ll follow a programme on a day-today basis, getting therapy while doing practicals in their music preference, and then we will try to get them started, be it on radio or DJing at events.”
Mathe, a University of Pretoria graduate who has published studies relating to children, eating disorders and general psychiatry, left South Africa in 2004. He and his girlfriend worked in a London hospital to help pay off their student loans.
It was here that he crafted his DJ skills, playing at South African gatherings around London, with DJs Oskido, Fis-
They need a crutch and we want music to be that crutch
taz Mixwell and Black Coffee when they visited the UK.
At the time he was working in renal medicine, obstetrics and gynaecology and emergency medicine. He often had to ask his girlfriend to work his shifts “because I had gigs to do. “I finally got permanent slots that didn’t clash with my work at the hospital.”