I’m No Longer A Retired Artist, here’s why and what happened...

In 2010, well over 4 years ago now, I decided to retire as an artist in the SA music industry. I felt much disillusionment with the industry that I had poured so much into but as an artist, I felt like I hadn’t gotten much back in return.

Looking at the bigger picture now, I realize that as much as there was and still are things in the SA music industry that simply aren’t right, it was the direction that I decided to take musically that I wanted out of. Many people due to a massively successful and commercial hit assumed that that was the only music I had ever done. There will also be many who knew that I had created 2 albums prior to that which were dripping in soul, funk, R&B and jazz.

In truth I made the decision to go for the money and in the cut-throat world we live in its what a lot of us have to do. Even as I continued recording & performing house music, although I didn’t verbalize it, I felt it was the wrong choice. Personally I wasn’t convinced that the music I was creating was the best I could create. There was no way to reverse those decisions and feeling musically cornered, not liking the direction my career was going, I jumped ship. Announcing my retirement might have been a rash decision at the time but it gave me time to sit back and reflect on where I felt I went wrong and how I should move forward.

At the same time as I was making sudden, drastic changes in my career, I was doing a similar job in my personal life. The beauty of being an artist is all personal happiness as well as drama inevitably manifests itself into works of art, in my case, new songs. And so, I sat with a new library of music too personal for somebody else to sing.

Beyond the “artist” side of my career, my management team and I began to figure out the best way to discover and mentor new talent. It’s incredible how when you put yourself out there into the world in the way you want people to see you, how the world responds.  For me, this came in the form of ‘Clash Of The Choirs SA’ and ‘Idols SA’. In 2013 and 2014 these shows provided me with a way to discover and enhance the amazing pool of talent we have in South Africa and hopefully they will continue to do so.

These shows, along with other songwriting and production work afforded me the luxury to get into the recording studio and lay down my new creations. I’m a much happier man in 2015 than the man I was in 2010 and although I’m 5 years older than that 2010 guy, I feel younger and more alive today than I ever have. The reality is that while I’m alive and breathing, I will always be creating new songs and new music and some of it will be sung and performed by me, I don’t really have a choice in the matter.

For now, I’m back. If you love Soul, Funk, R&B with a touch of jazz then please check out my EP currently available on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/za/album/the-5th-story-ep/id944998512

The 5^th Story full album will be out 05/05/2015, happy new year!

'Who I Am' 10th Year Anniversary by Bongani Mdakane

I can’t help but be nostalgic when I hear the opening bars on RJ Benjamin’s signature song “C U In My Dreams.” It seems like just yesterday when he came into our lives through that very song. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 10 years.

Many people, myself included were convinced that RJ Benjamin was an international artist. As brilliant as South African music was and still is, RnB/Soul music was a “largely underdeveloped” genre at that time.  To our utter shock the artist responsible for the song was not only South African but also a white man! The world had seen its fair share of Blue Eyed Soul, but not South Africa.

“C U In My Dreams” was the break through single from RJ Benjamin’s critically acclaimed “Who I Am” album.  A poignant ballad about regret and self persecution. People took an immediate liking to the song.

 Looking back, “Who I Am” album couldn’t have been released at a more unlikely time. The year was 2003 and the climate in the local industry was not the most accommodating for Soul singers.  One can argue that it still isn’t but the situation was worse 10 years ago. It is no secret that House, Afro-Pop, Afrikaans, Gospel and Kwaito music are the most popular genres in South Africa.  This gives one a sense of what a risk it was to release an album like “Who I Am”.  It became South Africa’s very first Neo-Soul album.

One thing you can’t miss about the album is how organic it is. Live horns, live drums and so forth on a record.  Mainstream RnB music had not sounded organic in years globally. It had to take albums like D’angelo’s “Voodoo” and Maxwell’s “Urban Hang Suite” (amongst others) to steer RnB back into that direction.  Picture an album like that in a country where Soul music was still a largely obscure genre.  Despite the odds the album was faced with, it definitely got the attention of the music industry. Admittedly, “C U In My Dreams” was the obvious favourite, but other tracks on the album enjoyed a reasonable amount of airplay,  including RJ’s “out of the box” cover of English Rock band Oasis’ “Wonderwall”.  RJ stripped that song of all its rock elements and clothed it with Horns, a slower tempo and a funky bass lick. I STILL use this song as a yardstick of how cover versions SHOULD be made.

RJ Benjamin established himself with “Who I Am” not only as singer but songwriter and producer. All the songs on the album were written by RJ himself. Apart from “Cry” and “Play Around” RJ is credited with the production of all the songs on the album.  He would later go on to write and produce for artists like Lira, MXO, Aya, Pebbles, Gift Gwe to name but a few. There seems to be a general consensus in the music industry that RJ Benjamin is the ‘go to guy’ for the production of Soul albums.

“Who I am” is the quintessential local Neo soul album, and it would see other albums gradually follow suit. South African audiences slowly began dissociating RnB/Soul music with the USA and embracing it as their own. This is the album that “tested the waters” for RnB/Soul others acts who would soon follow.

It’s inconceivable to look at the strides that Rnb/Soul genre has taken in South Africa without considering the profound influence RJ Benjamin’s “Who I Am” had on the industry. 10 years later it’s still viewed by many as THEE album to beat.

Bongani Mdakane

Training The Voice Is No Different To Training The Body

For about a year now I’ve been training under the tutelage of personal trainer Caz Abrahams. Initially it was a slow process. It took me at least 6 months to realize the discipline I would need to achieve my goals. Rather obviously, the only way to achieve true results at the gym is consistency both in training and in diet.

The more I got into it, the more I realized that it was the same type of discipline that assisted me in achieving the goals I had set for myself while studying vocals well over 10 years ago now. I can recall many other students around me complaining that they weren’t getting results while I on the other hand was reaching new highs musically and vocally. The key, of course was focus. Certainly for 2 solid years of studying I hid away in my sister’s old bedroom, which became my music room and practiced all the time. I remember how my friends never gave up on trying to get me to go out and party but I was so determined to get results that I turned them down every time.

I saw results because I trained every single day. Instead of listening to the radio or music on my way to campus in the morning, I was warming up. I was told that humming throughout my mid and lower chest voice range would improve my tone. In those days we still had tape decks in cars and so I compiled a 60 minute blank cassette tape with strictly humming exercises and in time it did improve my tone. That made it easier to create presence when singing into a microphone without even having to try. I also placed one of those giant annual calendars up on my room wall. I had a different colour highlighter for each different vocal aspect I had to concentrate on for example: red would be breathing technique, blue would be dynamics, green would be flexiblilty and so on, the same way when I train at the gym I focus on a different muscle group depending on the day, mixing it with cardio etc. After a week I could clearly see how much vocal training I had done and which vocal aspects I had worked on. The following week I would focus on the highlighter colours (vocal aspects) I had neglected.

I find myself doing a similar thing now with gym using an app called MyFitnessPal. It helps me monitor what I’m eating, how many calories I’m burning and what parts of my body I need to focus on exercising.

Don’t underestimate diet either as a vocalist. Oily and acidic foods as well as gassy drinks can be a nightmare for a singer. In particular, try not to have these sorts of things at night to avoid going to bed and suffering from what many singers find to be a problem – silent reflux. That’s quite similar if you think about it to avoiding eating foods too late at night, especially snacking.

I have achieved great results already in the 6 months I’ve been truly disciplined at the gym and with my diet. The point is, you will not improve your voice by simply going to one singing lesson a week or 2 a month the same way you will not get in shape by going to a personal trainer twice a week. You have to put in the hours too if you want to see results. A vocal coach or a personal trainer is there to show you how to do the exercises. The reality is that the majority of us will never be able to afford to see a vocal coach or personal trainer everyday but the truth is, we don’t need to!  

Studying Music in SA – whats the point?

After a few years of trying my hand at other things not music, I inevitably landed up studying music. It was what I had been born to do & therefore there was no reason I study something else. Following that I became a lecturer & have since been in music education for 10 years now. I’ve always encouraged people with talent to study music. The value you gain is taking that talent to another level the same way a good sports coach would.

It’s always been to my advantage being a music teacher & being in the industry at the same time. I’m seen as a teacher who can do. The flip side of that is I have seen over the last 8 years, being in the music industry how its changing & sadly, is becoming harder & harder for musicians to make a living. In defining what a musician is, this is someone who plays a musical instrument or sings with proficiency. They have to, to some degree have mastered their craft.

Right now as the SA music industry stands, DJs are taking over to such a degree that the mindset of the average person on the street is – live music (real instrument playing the music is boring). Being an artist who performs in clubs to house music, I see the reaction to that & then I see the reaction to live music with my band…not all the time but there is a mindset out there that live = boring. 

There are many factors contributing to this. More music on radio & airwaves over the past 3 decades has become less real so people’s ears have adapted & gotten used to a specific sound. I don’t know how to change the perceptions out there but something…especially in South Africa has to be done because if we are not careful, we will become musically & culturally bankrupt!

In order to learn & master an instrument it can take decades…even a lifetime. Surely then when you see someone pouring their soul out through an instrument, you realize you are seeing something that takes skill, discapline & ultimately talent. There are DJs out there with true skill & talent, but to beat mix one song to another, in my mind doesn’t constitute as talent. Moreso, a DJ mixing songs out of key & my worst, accapellas out of key cannot be called talented. For the most part a DJ is a compiler.

Yet it is DJ’s that are for the most taking a large cut of what once would’ve been how a musician would make a living. Its all about what people want & yes, what you want are DJ’s, playing largely House & Hip-Hop.

Let me use this as an appeal to the minister of Arts & Culture & to the minister of Education to begin addressing the issue of a Country in threat of becoming culturally bankrupt. 

How do I write songs?

The question I get asked most frequently in my life is "How do write songs?". Obviously, that is not an easy question to answer because as a songwriter, you often develop your craft from the time you can speak, possibly even before that. A comment was made to me though, that was just very presumptuous & pretty damn silly. 


Publicly in South Africa it was often a talking point that I had studied music & was a music teacher myself, primarily a vocal coach. However, I only studied in my early twenties & way before that, probably from around 5 years of age I was creating music. 

The comment I received was that my music sounded rigid & lacked feel, "soul", dare I say it. Following that, this person told me it was because I was a studied musician & that me studying had caused that. 


Now granted being a musician, primarily a singer I am a rather sensitive soul but I took his words well as I have learnt to do in my medium age. I thought about it a lot, as would be expected. It bothered me because I seldom hear comments like that about my music but I did need to see where he was coming from. Some weeks later, someone on Facebook sent me a message. He told me he was a student in Canada studying music & he wanted to know how I wrote songs & asked for any tips & pointers. 


This got me thinking. As I started writing, it was like I was answering the very questions I was asking myself. How much theory do I put into my writing or for that matter, my music. Here's what I said:

"I've always been writing music, as far back as re-creating the theme's of my favourite cartoon show's like He-man, Thundercats, Transformers etc in the early 80's. In those days there was no musical instrument in my home so really the only way I could create the music was vocally & the rest remained in my imagination. I know it sounds strange, but i used to grind my teeth in various ways to create drum patterns. of course no-one could hear that but me because I'm the only one who can hear my teeth grinding through my bone structure. sorry for veering off, I guess its hard to explain & it probably wasn't great for my teeth in the long term although no major dental issues as yet! LOL. 

From there I obviously gained influence from the pop artists of the time & various old LP's my dad had: Al Jarruea, Lou Rawls, Bill Withers, Aretha Franklin etc as well as I guess what every kid was into back then, Michael Jackson. 

Music started to become my way of dealing with stressful times & this came about when money became a huge bone of contention between my mom & dad. Every time they fought, i would go outside & almost in blocking out the noise, i would let my imagination run wild & sing away creating my first real songs. I still know them remember each & every one of those songs. 

Towards the end of my primary school years, my aunt gave us her piano. i was on it straight away trying to put what I had in my mind for all the years onto the piano. music was still a very private thing for me but I had a feeling that one day it wouldn't be. 

An approach I adopted from the 1st time I wrote a song was how I would know that it was a good song? If I remebered the song the nexy day or many days afterwards, Almost as if it was proof that what I had written was memorable, I knew that it was a good song worth banking my mental file cabinet of songs. I still use this approachto this day. Whether or not this really works, I dont really know but to me its my way of separating the good idea's from the bad. 

in my teen years, the 1st intersting change in developing my voice & my songwriting skillz was a Hi-fi my parents bought me for my 13th birthday. you know, the big thing in those days was "THE DOUBLE TAPE DECK" with super speed recording of course! they bought me a microphone with it. I figured out that i could record myslef into the hi-fi, then put that tape into the other deck, record that tape onto another tape plus record my vocal again. what this in turn created was multiple harmony. i started to expermiment with various harmonic ideas, rhythms & vocal sounds. It also helped me get used to the sound of my voice & mould it to how i wanted to sound. Those tapes are hiding somewhere in my old boxes. 

At this point i had basic piano training & I frustrated most of my teachers because I relied too heavily on my ear. 

A big change in my musical mind was being introduced to Prince in my 1st year of high school. Aside from the fact that he played many instruments & very well, I truly appreciated his willingness to experiment with sounds & the way he expressed himself through virtually every musical style. i wanted know why he was like this & in researching this, i discovered it was very much due to his openess in listening to all styles of music whether that be a piece by Bach, his many funk influences such as Earth, wind & Fire, Sly & the family Stone & James Brown as well as his folk & rock influences such as Joni Mitchel, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santa. There's no doubt Stevie Wonder had an influence on him too. I think it really taught me to listen & expand my music horizons which i still do to this day. The Neo-soul & Acid jazz movements were my favourites of the time in the 90's. While the other kids were into The Offspring, The Cranberries, Green day & Nirvana I was in my on world as a white boy listening to D'angelo, Maxwell, Eryka Badu & from the UK, loving Jamiroquai & the Brand new Heavies. Of course later on, I discovered many others such as Incognito, omar & the neo-soul movement - as many people will know I wave that flag in SA more than anyone else! 

After school i decided to study music. I found jazz became a major influence on me. starting with vocalists because that was my 1st instrument. Artists like Bobby Mcferrin played a huge part early on. Crooners such as Frank Sinatra & emulators such Harry Connick Jr who of course is a great pianist & genuis arranger in my mind also influenced me. of course it was the research of the songs they were singing that made a big impression. Cole Porters songs still inspire to this day & the many other great songwriters of that time. Ella Fitzgerald became my next love & found myself becoming quite obsessed! I've always loved to scat as many of my colleagues in South Africa would tell you. Ella is a true queen of that art-form. I love the way she just enjoys what she's doin. She always seems so happy when she sings. her interpretations of songs are spellbinding at times. as instrumentalists go, I love Miles & Herbie as they played a big part in creating the funk movement & were so willing to try new things. Thelonius Monk was a beautiful soul for me & you could feel that through his music. Currently loving Peter Cincotti. I think he is a brilliant pianist! I just hope they dont try commercialise him the way they are trying now. 

i think my approach to music has changed over the years. 

after studying music & graduating in 2000, I found my approach to composition became fairly analytical. i have gone back to where i was as a child. Letting my imagination run wild & hand in hand with that using the theoretcial & analytical knowledge I have learnt to finetune those Ideas. 

In my new album "Swimming in the soul of music", my production style has matured a lot. i wanted to apply something Miles davis used to say. "Music is all about space". Every instrument has its place. A lot of music tends to put all instruments in a small space & often songs come accross as sounding cluttered! i wanted to ensure that when a listener played my album, they could pick out an instrument clearly without having to strain to find it. I wasn't going to create tension either where tension was not neccessary & rather place it only in moments where it needed. Sometimes as arrangers & producers, we tend to place complex rhythms or chords in places, simply to impress ourselves. Listeners often hear the same thing cringing! 

i hope this helps, i know its a lot. i think i got carried away. i think essentially, my point here is music is best when we create like a child, we have fun with it & let our imaginations run wild! the theory you learn is merely to finetune your imagination, they should work hand in hand!"

& there was my answer, in that last phrase I said it. i still write like I did when I was 5 years old. I let my imagination run wild, I "play" music & the theory is there just in case I need it.

The official top 20 greatest albums of all time…Oh please!

Over the years, there have been many lists drawn up of “THE GREATEST ALBUMS OF ALL TIME”. Many albums repeating on the lists but not always in the same order & always highly scrutinized by all who read them. It seems like the world had become obsessed with “The top of all time lists”. With respect to music it makes sense these lists exist. Certainly from the onset of Rock n’ roll they’ve existed & music never looked back. 

Now, after 60 odd years & a myriad of mega-stars, the great debates begin & the one that always fascinates me, “THE GREATEST ALBUMS OF ALL TIME”. The internet’s a perfect one for these sort of lists & I ignore them consistently like ignoring spam because without fail, personal opinion gets in the way & then the comments rage on & people get ugly. A few weeks back, in front of me as one of the headlines of a legitimate news website – “THE OFFICIAL TOP 20 GREATEST ALBUMS OF ALL TIME”. I was too curios not to look, I mean this was “official”! I clicked & there, before my very eyes was yet another list with flawed criteria & as hard as the compiler of the list may have tried, personal bias filtered through. This top 20 based its figures on sales & the amount of Grammy’s won. Clearly, the compiler was a big Led Zeppelin fan with 5 of the 20 albums being Zeppelin albums. I cannot argue that Zeppelin don’t deserve to be their but 5 albums seemed to be a clue to me of bias. 

It’s had me thinking for weeks now, can you really compile a list like this? The answer is no. the only way we could ever compile a legitimate list would be to base it on sales & even there when I looked into that it has only been in recent times that we have seen international sales being calculated as opposed to sales figures from the US. Furthermore, technology must have an influence on these figures with the advent of the LP, the cassette tape, the decline of these 2 & the introduction of the compact disc & now its demise affecting sales figures worldwide. You cannot officially have a “G.O.A.T” list. 

Looking at this list did one good thing. It made me think of what my top 20 albums of all time would be & what I realized is that we all have our greatest & does it really matter what other people think? As I read through all the comments & reading comments you would see on Youtube for example, it seems like people the world over need other people to affirm that their opinion is right! That’s crazy in itself because our opinions are what make us unique. So, think about your lists, based on albums that really had an impact on your lives. They may not have been the biggest selling, they may not have won 5 Grammy’s but they meant something in your life & surely that's far more important than whether or not other people think it’s “THE GREATEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME”. 

Here’s mine, I based it on the impact it had on my life. Surprisingly no Prince albums made my list but he does remain my favourite artist of all time:

1. D’angelo – Voodoo 
2. Michael Jackson – Dangerous 
3. India Arie – Acoustic soul 
4. Eric Benet – A day in the life 
5. Amel Larieux – Infinite Possibilities 
6. John Mayer – Room for Squares 
7. Damien Rice – O 
8. Eryka Badu – Baduism 
9. Incognito – No time like the future 
10. Jeff Buckley – Grace 
11. Jill Scott – Experience
12. Nikka Costa – Everybody Got their something
13. P.M. Dawn – The Bliss Album 
14. Stevie Wonder – Songs in the key of life
15. Terrence Trent D’arby – Vibrator
16. The Brand New Heavies – Brother Sister
17. George Michael – Older
18. Alana Davis – Blame it on me
19. Lenny Kravitz – Mama Said
20. Van Morrison - His band & The street choir