Durban - There’s a new songbird in town and despite only recently making her debut, Gwyn Makhanya’s hit song, Radio, is rocking the airwaves.
Immediately after the song’s release it made it onto East Coast Radio’s top 40 music hit list and the singer says it’s still a surreal experience when she hears herself on air.
“Iyoh I’ve waited so long for this to happen,” she said.
Makhanya always loved music and at primary school, teachers would regularly ask her to sing for concerts or assembly.
After school, she wanted to take up music full time, but her dad wanted her to be an accountant.
“Me and money, hahaha, I told him I can only count the money that he gives me,” she said.
Her passion won out and Makhanya studied at the Campus for Performing Arts in Morningside.
She has sung at various venues, most frequently in fine dining institutions like Cafe la Plage at The Pearls in uMhlanga, as well as the Italian restaurant Spiga in Morningside.
However, until the beginning of this year, she has always been the backing artist and was still not close to her dream of being a solo artist in her own right.
To supplement her income Makhanya continued doing hairdressing, the side hustle which she had started while attending Verulam Secondary School and said her clients loved it when she sang while doing their hair
Her fortunes changed when she met the executives from Black City Records, a new and independent record label in Durban.
The label comes from the famous “Casbah” area of Durban which was a hive of political resistance and musical evolution in the 50s, 60s and 70s, and earned the nickname “Black City” by the apartheid security forces.
In 2019, Black City Records tasted success after they signed up singer and guitarist Gloire Mapenzi who had a successful debut with the hit, Signs. Covid put everything on hold.
Managing director Yogan Naidoo said he had already written a song and when they heard Makhanya’s soaring soprano he knew she would be able to perform it perfectly.
Before they could sign an agreement in 2020, Covid-19 scuppered their plans and Makhanya had to wait two years before she could make it to a studio and belt out Radio, the song that would launch her solo career.
Naidoo said they were delighted when the song made it onto the East Coast Radio top 40 charts almost immediately after it was released.
Naidoo, from Chatsworth, said he and the label’s non-executive director Yeogan Dorasamy were both music lovers and successful business people in their own right.
However, decades of experience could not have prepared them for the intricacies of the music industry.
Naidoo said he and Dorasamy knew that talent wasn’t enough to grow a career as an artist but that the artists needed “a machine” behind the scenes which could drive the process for them.
He said Black City Records wanted to develop emerging South African artists and help them to become successful.
“We are a proudly Durban institution. The aspiration is to bring quality local music so we are not genre specific right now, we just want to create some good products that can compete nationally and internationally. So we are not very modest in our ambitions, we want to take this all the way,” said Naidoo.
He described Makhanya as young, charismatic and very keen to be successful.
Dorasamy, an Information and communications technology expert, said that, globally, piracy was a huge problem in the industry and Black City Records had systems in place to counter this.
Valencia Joshua, who owns Dream Lab Productions and is the creative producer at Black City Records, said they were committed to producing locally relevant and authentic work which would also showcase KwaZulu-Natal.
She said Makhanya was initially shy but over the months they got to know the vibrant and colourful personality she was hiding.
Her music video, which can be viewed online, was full of colour and joy, said Joshua.
“We are trying to push Gwyn as far as we can, not just locally but internationally too,” she said.
The Independent on Saturday