Old School DJs put on a show for the ages

Simba Jemwa, Showbiz Reporter

Local DJs have been trying to revive the hugely popular Old School gigs that made the nightclub scene in the late 90s to early 2000s memorable for many lovers of music in Bulawayo.

Those days, nightclubs like Visions in Bulawayo and Circus in Harare were the places to be!
Last Friday, revellers at The Place in Bulawayo were taken down memory lane by the DJ coterie of Kimble Rodgers, Tony Friday, Emity Smooth, Mark Vusani and Babongile Sikhonjwa at a jam they have named ‘Old School Friday’.

When it comes to deejaying to mature music-loving crowds, Rodgers and company have always faced an uphill battle. They are not Black Coffee who breezes through each gig as if it’s just another party on a seemingly endless Ibiza holiday and they are not DJ Fresh who is brilliantly facetious.

Last Friday’s Old School aficionados are far more human than any star DJs on this continent, and their choice of music – soul, rap, rock, techno, mbaqanga, all the variants of reggae are all records that are ornate bordering on ornery, so poetic and literary.

This is doubly true of their most recent performances which are an elaborate and often uncomfortable trauma opera about, among other things, love, heartbreak, and loss – a whole spectrum of emotional gamut.

How do you bring an audience into Uncle Sam’s haunting I Don’t Ever Wanna See You Again, a song that is as painful as it is ruthlessly poetic or Boys to Men’s Bended Knee whose hook is basically therapy-speak repeated over and over?

Kimble and company’s solution is to lean into melodrama. Emerge onto the decks with a bounce and a smile, hug a few groupie fans, and get the ever-bubbling Sikhonjwa gap away with his jokes like a villain in panto of the audiences’ own lives. Forego the temptation to get under the feet of the very energetic 2000s and their Amapiano overtones in favour of an old beat with “therapist” voices and interludes from some seriously lyrical musicians from an age ago.

And although the set lists may share similar songs, each individual performance is entirely different and occasionally feels like a separate show.

Last Friday was undeniably one of the most involved performances of the five DJs on rotation. Thematically, it felt more profoundly coherent than much of what today’s club DJs can offer a mature reveller who just wants to rekindle fond memories of an age gone by.

Each of the five gave the sizable and absolutely appreciative audience, a sense of déjà vu! So, this and every Friday at The Place this summer will become a night to walk through the ages! -@RealSimbaJemwa