Even though Kwaito is not getting as much play as it was a couple of years ago and house music seems to be dominant in South Africa a couple of tracks from South Africa still manage to come through and catch peoples attention. Township funk is infectious in a way that i cant explain. This is the most remixed African song of the year.
[audio:http://musicfiles.s3.amazonaws.com/01 – Township Funk.mp3]more on DJ mujava here
and the Video is here
Elvis Maswanganyi aged 24 well know as DJ Mujava hails from Pretoria in a township called Attridgeville. He was raised in a family of 7, father, two sisters and two brothers. From all the family members he was the only one who had love for music as he used to be a dancer and he spent his spare time practicing with a small keyboard that he had at home. He was inspired by the likes of DJ Fresh, DJ Oskido ,Masters At Work, Revolution, Loop Masters, etc.
Unlike other producers who had a chance to go to school to study music, DJ Mujava had to learn the hard way, by striving very hard to get a way of knowing how to programme music. His brother sacrificed not to throw himself a party and decided to buy Mujava a computer so he could learn and master his production skills..
Pretoria based community stations played a huge role in honing and familiarizing DJ Mujava’s music to the masses. Within no time Mujava had become a household name in his neighborhood. Taxis and taverners were flocking to DJ Mujava’s house requesting that he gives them the music he was producing. Without any strains and hassles, Mujava would give these people his material as everybody was excited about this. His production became the talk of town and taxi’s started punting his tracks in a big way. This was now becoming a trend that every taxi has to play a DJ Mujava CD. Through all of this, he managed to learn the trade as he was becoming more exposed to the music industry. A recording deal was in the cards, however Mujava wanted to learn the business side of this industry.
Mujava as he was affectionately known in his High School days, met up with Cry, a Gospel producer who had an independent company called CSP. Cry suggested to Mujava that they should try a house project. The two (DJ Mujava & Cry) then started a company called House Therapy Productions.
He then worked with different artist within House Therapy Productions, producing music for the likes of Bujo Mujo, Casablanca(DJ Floit), DJ Cee, Getto Skwatt (Hip Group), Simon Makhatholele(Gospel), Tsala & Spoko and their songs were the most popular tracks in the year 2004 as BOP featured one of their songs on their album Skororo(BOP Killer “Naja”). Besides producing music for other artists he has five albums that he released under his name DJ Mujava titled, House Assignment 1 & 2, Bass & Drums 1 & 2, DJ Mujava presents Getto Skwatt, House Rawkers.and lastly DJ’s by Nature.
After establishing himself in the market, he then decided to spread his wings further by joining his production (Mujava’s Music Production & Entaertainment) with Sheer House, as they are the masters of dance music to date especially House Music, and now they bring you DJ Mujava’s latest works called DJ Mujava “Pretoria’s Exclusive V1”.
Bio courtesy of coda agency
