What It’s Like To…Run an Electronic Music Label in Eswatini
Sizo Hlophe is one of the young, forthright visionaries who are intent on shifting how the Kingdom of Eswatini is perceived. He is the co-founder of Antidote Music, a mainly electronic music label that has over the years developed a special place in the hearts of music lovers. Hlophe’s father used to manage Eswatini’s International Trade Fair, and that is how he realized the impact of music, and of art in general, in society. “I was a kid, and seeing young Mzambiya, Msawawa on that stage moving the crowd, I always watched with envy. The seed was planted in those years (early 2000s),” he tells OkayAfrica in an interview.
Antidote Music was founded in 2012, and evolved from The Antidotes, a loose collective of friends who used to DJ and make music in 2010. One of their biggest remixes is Nomalungelo’s Dladla’s “Imiyalo,” which Hlophe says was licensed by the legendary House Afrika Records. Hlophe further became aware of the impact that music can have during his student years in Johannesburg. There, he lived above the old Afrikan Freedom Station, a place he refers to as “an institution.”
“We were already running Antidote Music for some years, but Afrikan Freedom Station is where I started to see the importance of this work we do with the team. The importance of bringing people together through music and overall art,” he says.
Hlophe speaks to OkayAfrica about the foundations of Antidote Music, and about how the label has overcome challenges over the years. The following segments have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Photo courtesy of Antidote Music and Sizo Hlophe.
Antidote Music artist, !Sooks at Bushfire Festival.
Sizo Hlophe: We established the label to understand how money moves in the music business. We wanted a home for our music as The Antidotes, and at the same time, wanted to share music from Eswatini with the world. We were the first music entity from Eswatini to put music on the internet. Prior to this though, a DJ Harris from Pretoria trusted us with running his label, Ma Melody Records. This is where we got to understand the backend at a time when independent dance music labels were very few. We were students and had free internet, something that was a scarce resource back at home.
Our first release was by Spumante, who currently works with Kabza De Small. He also releases his own projects under Piano Hub. So we kind of laid the foundation for him in 2013. The next group that we started working with was Groove Basement, and within the group is an artist called Nhlonipho, who’s big within the amapiano space at the moment. He works with Robot Boii. And then we started working with Secret Souls, who were also a collective like The Antidotes. They were mainly focusing on deep house. They came in with this minimal techno, deep house sound, which at the time didn't really have a firm grounding in South Africa. We are like an incubator for these artists. We’ve released music from all over the world. We have a project from Brazil, we have a project from Singapore, we have a project from the U.S. We have projects from Spain, and from the U.K. Actually, there's an interesting project that we released from the U.K., it's remixes for a U.K. R&B legend who signed the music with us. So we became almost like this record label that was signing music from all over the world, which no one really anticipated.
We started Antidote Culture Foundation in 2022, which is an NGO that provides capacity to artists in the country. This allowed us to connect with various actors in the industry who we all have shared ambitions for the sector with. Also, as people working with art, we have a level of sensitivity for issues, and the more we engage in these issues the more multi-dimensional the work we produce becomes. Personally, I used to reflect through poetry and recently through photography. This shows how unrestricted we are in terms of expression. So this shared sensitivity is what has allowed us to bring these worlds together and just above all, respect for various expressions that exist or come out of Eswatini. Music alone already allows for a lot of collaborations across disciplines, this has allowed us to build some communities around ourselves and somehow be able to see how we work together to progress each other’s works.
Photo courtesy of Antidote Music and Sizo Hlophe.
Antidote Music artists, Sarnilo and Mzwaa at Bushfire Festival.
What I enjoy the most about the work I do is being within a cultural renaissance in Eswatini. There are a lot of movements happening, and just being there when all these things are taking shape, it’s a blessing. Ultimately, I love how we’ve taken something that was never considered an industry or a career and we’ve created livelihoods out of it. We did have dreams of it, that’s why we never gave up and now we’re able to work in music, in art, and we call it work. That’s rare in our context.
The biggest challenge we face is that in Eswatini’s National Development Plan, the creative and cultural industries do not appear. Arts and culture only appear when referring to an institution, but there is no real strategy. There is also no urgency in prioritizing the sector, or even investing in knowledge. Civil Society Organisations provide the most capacity in the industry. Beyond that advocacy bit, we have a population of 1.2 million people. This already limits the reach artists can have and also limits the level of investment coming into the sector.
The most important change would be the creation of enabling environments for people to create their own pockets of communities. Our NGO, Antidote Culture Foundation, partnered with Yebo Art Gallery to create a space in Mbabane city to make art accessible, and most importantly we wanted to enable people to come together. This is a space in Mbabane where you know you will always find artists when you walk in. Also through our NGO, we’re looking at ways to map out cultural clusters that exist in the country so we can make evidence-based decisions in advocacy or any resource mobilization for the sector.
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