At the 2020 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal on March 6, DJ Zinhle shone in the spotlight, talking about her journey from rock-bottom to record-breaking. 



As the
woman responsible for South Africa’s My Name Is hit song
makes her way onto the stage, there is rapturous applause from a 1,000 strong
audience, gathered at Durban’s international convention center for the 2020 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Leading Women Summit.



Zinhle
Jiyane, popularly known as DJ Zinhle, walks up to the solo stage with her
four-year-old daughter, Kairo Forbes, who she calls one of her “biggest
achievements”.



South
Africa’s award-winning DJ and media personality presents an inspirational
speech during the summit’s #SPOTLIGHT session.



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“You’re lazy. You’re extremely lazy,” cites Zinhle as the words that shaped her into the woman she is today.



As a
child, Zinhle, who hails from KwaZulu-Natal, was heartbroken every time she was
called lazy.



“I knew I was a creative at heart. My lack of interest in limited career options and the mundane robotic task of drying the dishes didn’t really appeal to me. That’s the thing that got me the title ‘vila voco’ (meaning an extremely lazy person in English).”&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Despite
that, Zinhle went on to pursue a BCom in marketing
at the University of Johannesburg. Graduating at the top of her class gave her the first dose of confidence.



“It was
possible. Although ‘vila voco’ might have been ringing in my head, at least I knew that it was possible to put in
the hard work and get
good results. That gave me all the confidence I need to
take over the world.
And that’s exactly what I did.”



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbeswomanafrica.com/woman/2020/03/11/lws2020kzn-the-forbes-woman-africa-2020-leading-women-summit-sets-the-bar-high-for-2021/">The FORBES WOMAN AFRICA 2020 Leading Women Summit Sets The Bar High For 2021</a>



Her new
found self-assurance propelled her to do more.



“In
2009, I launched Fuse Academy, the first and only DJ female academy in South Africa. Ten years later, the academy has
produced working DJs in
the industry that have contributed largely to the overall
entertainment
industry.”



After
eight years of resilience in the music industry, she finally scored her big break. 



“I had a song called My Name Is featuring Busiswa which became one of the biggest songs in 2012, not only in South Africa, but in most parts of Africa. This song was special to me because for the first time I knew what real success was. It was an exciting time for me as a woman”.



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Music
has always been the DJ’s first love, so while one hand was on the decks, she
tried the other hand at entrepreneurship.



“In 2013, I launched my jewelry business, Era By DJ Zinhle. Seven years later, my pride and joy is the first black female owned business to distribute through American Swiss.”



The hit
maker has been vocal about the importance of female empowerment. Her
involvement in a project seeking to do just this inspired her to put pen to
paper.



“In
2017, I joined a very important project called ‘It Takes A Village’ on SABC1 focusing on 11
young women who needed to deal with the demons
of their past. My role was to help them through this process, and help them find a better future for themselves. Spending time
with these incredible
ladies inspired me to write a book.”



Along with Nokubonga Mbanga, Zinhle published a book called Meeting Your Power that went on to become a best-seller.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/arts/2019/04/10/noami-campbell-has-big-plans-for-africa/">Naomi Campbell Has Big Plans For Africa</a>



Her new
hit Umlilo featuring Mvzzle &amp; Rethabile is her
latest achievement. The song, which means ‘fire’, was one of the biggest hits
to come out of South Africa in 2019.



“I’m very
proud of this song. Umlilo was out for
three months and had already reached platinum. It had over five million streams
in two months. Over and above that, it was crowned the crossover song by Metro
FM and many other radio stations. The last time Metro FM had a female-led song
as the crossover song of the year was in 1997 when Brenda Fassie took it with Vulindlela.”



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On March 6, Zinhle also won the 2020 FORBES WOMAN AFRICA Entertainer Award.

Forbes LWS2020KZN-3918

DJ Zinhle: The ‘Lazy Kid’ Who Achieved Platinum Success

Before regularly scoring six-figure nightly fees spinning thumpy electronic tunes, Zedd got his start playing classical music at age 4. He learned how to plan performances with meticulous detail, an ability that&#8217;s obvious in his carefully choreographed shows today, which feature less of the freewheeling song selection used by most popular DJs. &#8220;I see myself as an artist who presents a show,&#8221; says Zedd, who earned $19 million this year and $85 million over the past five. &#8220;It&#8217;s almost like when you go to the movies. You&#8217;re not going to buy your ticket and see a movie and, if you don&#8217;t like it, expect the movie to change in real time.&#8221;
Zedd has produced hits for Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga and released solo smashes like last year&#8217;s multiplatinum &#8220;Stay&#8221;- while becoming the anti-DJ of the DJ universe. To distinguish himself from competitors, he created a graphics-heavy live show that feels like watching a videogame projected onto a movie screen with a custom visual for each song. A cable runs from his computer to the front of the house, where a team of technicians makes sure everything syncs up, including the program&#8217;s lasers and pyrotechnics. &#8220;It used to be really cheap to make a show &#8211; I used to be able to keep all the money,&#8221; Zedd recalls. &#8220;Now the shows cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.&#8221;
As costs continue to escalate in a musical arms race, Zedd is flirting with the idea of reinventing the DJ model again by turning to something with which he&#8217;s very familiar: live instrumentation. &#8220;I think I will one day go unplugged.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_34829" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34829" class=" wp-image-34829" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Zedd-1-200x300.jpg" alt="Zedd DJ" width="300" height="450" />Zedd: He&#8217;s earned $85 million over the past five years at the height of the EDM boom. Just don&#8217;t call him a DJ (Photo by Jamel Toppin)</div>
Forbes senior editor Zack O&#8217;Malley Greenburg sat down with Zedd at the 30 Under 30 Summit in October. Here&#8217;s the interview for the first time, with a few light edits for clarity and brevity.
ZOG: The first time I interviewed you, about four years ago, you said, &#8220;You know, I don&#8217;t want to say I&#8217;ll be a producer, and a DJ, for the rest of my life. I can totally see myself being in another band in five years, if that&#8217;s what my heart and soul wants to do. If that&#8217;s what will make me happy, I&#8217;m totally happy just to not DJ anymore.&#8221; So, it&#8217;s been almost five years, how are you feeling about that? Are you going to go unplugged? Or are you going to do the current thing a little while longer?
Zedd: I think I will one day go unplugged or change my show somehow. Or my show form, I&#8217;ll say that. Currently I am still DJing, yet I think I have a way more dramatic show, and a much for dynamic show than I&#8217;ve ever had, that involves a lot of planning&#8230; the nature of the DJ is to go up there, and play a song, look at the crowd, feel it out, and then play whatever you think people want to hear. That&#8217;s very difficult for me, because I see myself as a musician in the first place, and I [challenge you to] name any artist who&#8217;d want to think they&#8217;d go on stage, and look at the crowd, and say, &#8220;Maybe let&#8217;s play this song. I don&#8217;t think people will like that one.&#8221; You present the show, you prepare, you rehearse for weeks, and then this is what you present to the crowd. And there&#8217;s always a section that is staying flexible to mix stuff up, if you have to, or if you want to. But I would say the majority of my set is pre-planned; it&#8217;s a show that I want to present. I want people to see something that I spent a lot of time working on.
ZOG: And the live element in your show, it&#8217;s obviously the core of the electronic music experience. But also streaming being the way the music gets out, the economics have changed a ton, even in the last few years. Talk a little bit about that, and how it&#8217;s starting to change for artists.
Zedd: I think that streaming became a huge part of every musician&#8217;s career. Even for, or especially for, unsigned artists. I have a friend who is a singer, and she just makes music at home and she puts it up on SoundCloud, and puts it up on Spotify, and she makes a really decent living off of people streaming her music. I think there&#8217;s a lot of artists who actually make more money now, streaming their music, than they did selling their music prior. And I was one of those people who was really scared of that whole streaming world, because you see all these numbers, and I don&#8217;t know what exactly the numbers [are], but it&#8217;s a fraction of a cent that you make per stream. And then in your mind it&#8217;s, &#8220;Oh my God, people are going to listen to my song once, and then that&#8217;s all I&#8217;m going to get.&#8221; But the reality is, that you can have millions of people stream your song, or songs, every single day. You can have 10 million streams on your album daily. Over a really long time that becomes a lot of money. So, I think that the streaming section that sounded so scary to me, and probably many others, is actually a really good thing.
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ZOG: Before, artists would put out new albums so that they could have new stuff to put in the concerts. But maybe [it will soon] flip back so that you do concerts just to raise awareness about the new music?
Zedd: Yeah, I mean, I think the music industry is changing really fast. So it&#8217;s hard to predict where things are going to go. I know a lot of artists don&#8217;t like touring. They do not like not having any sleep every day, being stressed every day. They like being at home, waking up, doing their thing, and then making music whenever they want to. There is much less of a schedule to create music than being on tour, and having to open the doors on time, and having a curfew.
And there&#8217;s artists that are the exact opposite, they hate being at home. And they feel frustrated, and they want to get out there and play music. I think that if anything, the streaming world may open the door for people who don&#8217;t want to tour, to actually not have to tour. There&#8217;s a great living you can make off of being creative and not having a schedule at all. And working when you want to work, and putting up music the next day. There use to be two or three months in the lead time to when you could release an album. And here you can just release your music the next day, if you want to.
ZOG: Tell me a little bit about your live show, what goes into it. I think a lot of people have a preconceived notion about what that entails.
Zedd: So my live show is not a DJ show at all. My platform is Djing, and I can change my music, and my selection of songs anytime. But essentially, what&#8217;s most important for me is for the crowd to go home and think that was an incredible experience. And to think that they can&#8217;t get that same experience from anybody else. And that involves, of course, the music choice, but also the visuals you see: the lights you see, the lasers, the special effects, and that&#8217;s all very choreographed. And that&#8217;s still all made live. So the way we do it is I DJ, and then there&#8217;s a cable running from my computer to the front of the house, with three screens so everybody is always aware of what I am playing, if I decide to change something last minute. Every song that I&#8217;ve ever played has a specific visual that goes with the song. And my team can, in real time, see what I am about to play, and adjust and create the visuals, and the lighting looks, and the colors, that we rehearsed for each song. Sometimes I play a song that has a visual that is also assigned to another song, then they can decide to, on the spot, change it, or whatever fits that moment. So, we essentially have a show that looks really rehearsed, and almost pre-made. Yet I have the flexibility to change anything, at any point in time.
ZOG: It&#8217;s more like a theater production than a movie, although you said it could be like a movie in some ways too.
Zedd: Yeah &#8230; it&#8217;s almost like when you go to the movies. You&#8217;re not going to buy your ticket and see a movie and if you don&#8217;t like it, you expect the movie to change in real time. That&#8217;s kind of how I see it. I am not going to go on stage, and look at the people, and if someone&#8217;s unhappy I&#8217;m going to change the music for that person. I spend way too much time &#8230; creating a theatrical show, to then adjust it on the spot, and make it something that&#8217;s not perfect. In my mind, this is what I want to present as an artist, and if people see me on tour, this is what they&#8217;re going to get. And if I, on the fly, decide to change something, that becomes part of the show. &#8230; Every moment is really planned out, every single light is planned out. So when people go to the show they should expect a real experience, not just me deciding on the fly what song I want to play.
ZOG: What sort of instance would cause you to change something on the fly?
Zedd: Well, for example, a few days ago I didn&#8217;t play one song, and what made me do that was just a mistake. I just forgot that I didn&#8217;t play that song. I thought I had already queued that song up, but I didn&#8217;t. And I was already mixed into another key &#8230; I&#8217;m trying to be very musical about the song choices I make, and I can&#8217;t just mix keys back and forth all the time, because that just doesn&#8217;t feel musical to me. So at that point, I was too far ahead. And I didn&#8217;t have any more songs that could lead into the key of that song that I missed. So I just left it out for the entire show.
What else could happen is that one part of my production is not working. There&#8217;s certain songs that &#8230; are not particularly exciting songs just by themselves, and I would never listen to them, because they&#8217;re not musical at all. But they give you the sense of lasers. Literally. You hear it and you think of something space flavored &#8230; and if we don&#8217;t have those lasers working, I&#8217;m not going to play that song, because it&#8217;s all senses that come together into one experience.
It&#8217;s not just about what you hear, but it&#8217;s the combination of what you see, and what you hear. And if you hear that sound of lasers, and then you see that right over you, and you feel like you can touch it, that&#8217;s the experience I want people to experience, and not just a song by itself. So, there&#8217;s a lot of things that can go wrong that would make me not play a certain song.
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ZOG: What are some things that you do in your live set that nobody else does at all?
Zedd: I think the preparation that goes into my sets is something that most DJs are embarrassed of. And I&#8217;ve had a conversation with an amazing DJ, one of the best DJs in that sense, he could go up there and play six hours. I don&#8217;t even have enough music to play six hours. I could never do that. Neither do I think there are six hours of incredible music that I&#8217;d want to play. But, he was under the impression that it&#8217;s not real DJ&#8217;ing if you go up there and you already have something prepared, if you have a list that you plan on playing. To me, that may be true for a DJ. But I just don&#8217;t consider myself a DJ. I see myself an artist who presents a show. So, to me there is nothing embarrassing about being perfectly prepared in knowing exactly what you&#8217;re about to do, but I think that most DJs have an issue with that. &#8230; A lot of people back five, six years ago thought, &#8220;You don&#8217;t even use headphones; so you&#8217;re not a real DJ.&#8221; [I say], &#8220;Yeah maybe?&#8221; I don&#8217;t know. I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s a need to use headphones if you&#8217;re well prepared.
ZOG: You don&#8217;t always use headphones, but you have your own headphone line. Tell me a little about that.
Zedd: Yeah. So my headphone line is essentially a headphone that is for everyday use. I wanted it to look nice, because a lot of headphones that look great, don&#8217;t sound great. So, in Tokyo I met with the people who make the headphones, and they had created a version of a Transformers type headphone &#8230; I don&#8217;t know how to make the parts, so it was dozens of parts, and you essentially build it as you go, and then you put on the headphone, and it looked terrible, but it sounded incredible. So I asked them, &#8220;Why don&#8217;t we both come together and make a headphone that looks incredible but also sounds incredible?&#8221; And so we started the process, and it was far over a year from the first drawings, to the first renderings, to the first design, then to changing the shape. And I just wanted everyone to have a headphone that is really pretty, and good-looking, and sounds incredible, but most importantly is really comfortable to wear for a long period of time, because as somebody who sometimes has to mix something on the road, it was important for me to have a tool that I can trust. So some headphones that I know: this is exactly what I make my music like in the studios, so this is what it sounds like on the road. And just to have that connection was really important for me.
ZOG: What&#8217;s next for you?
Zedd: What&#8217;s next for me is I just started my tour, so I will be touring for a while. And I am, for the first time, trying out to not spend two years working on one single album and then put it out at the same time. But I essentially want to finish a song. I will try to release it pretty quickly. And I started that with &#8220;Stay,&#8221; that was the first time I finished a song essentially, and put it out right away &#8230; it sounded fresh. I don&#8217;t know how fresh &#8220;Stay&#8221; would have sounded if I released it two years from now, when the rest of my album is done. I want to try that for a little while. Then next year I will probably take some time and make an album, and I don&#8217;t know what that will mean yet and whether that will be a concept album, but I&#8217;m starting to want to make one again.
ZOG: Have you seen costs go up dramatically for your show? What are some of the things that have changed over time, in that regard?
Zedd: Yeah, I mean, I remember my first tour I ever played as a DJ was with Skrillex, and back then, my production, as an opening act, was just a folding table. And between me and the next DJ, who was Porter Robinson, I looped the song, and he came on stage, and while the song was looping, we switched tables into his laptop, and then I was like, &#8220;Thanks, guys!&#8221; And I&#8217;d walk off the stage and he&#8217;d start. That is not the thing anymore today. Everything is really professional. From the change over music, from what you hear and see, between each DJ, to the cost you spend on a show. I mean it used to be really cheap to make a show, I used to be able to keep all the money, and now the shows cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, just to put on one show, because the special effects are expensive, and you have to get all these licenses &#8230; the expenses have gone up dramatically.

Zedd – The $85 Million Classically Trained DJ

Ufuoma Ekpecham left Lagos for London eight years ago with her suitcases, two kids and a heavy heart. She had to leave; she needed a change: the heartache following her parents’ death, three months within each other, was too much to handle. She had to divert her mind, and quickly.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29664 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Ufuoma-Ekpecham-of-JoshNicol-pic-taken-by-Trevor-Sturmann-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ufuoma-Ekpecham-of-JoshNicol-pic-taken-by-Trevor-Sturmann-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ufuoma-Ekpecham-of-JoshNicol-pic-taken-by-Trevor-Sturmann-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ufuoma-Ekpecham-of-JoshNicol-pic-taken-by-Trevor-Sturmann-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ufuoma-Ekpecham-of-JoshNicol-pic-taken-by-Trevor-Sturmann-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ufuoma-Ekpecham-of-JoshNicol-pic-taken-by-Trevor-Sturmann-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ufuoma-Ekpecham-of-JoshNicol-pic-taken-by-Trevor-Sturmann.jpg 682w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
She always had a flair for fashion – she had previously been “making some good money” designing clothes for friends and family, but not as a full-time professional.
Thanks to a supportive husband, who said “go back to school, learn it properly”, when the opportunity presented itself, she left Lagos to take up a degree in fashion design in London.
Her husband stayed on in Nigeria, and Ekpecham dove into her studies, managing the home and looking after the children on her own “minus the luxury of nannies or drivers”.
It was tough, but today, the 42-year-old is the London-based creative director of her clothing brand Josh &amp; Nicol, named after her children.
Recently in Johannesburg for the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Africa, showcasing her spring summer 2015 collection, Ekpecham says she is in a happy space, stronger and independent, just like the motif she uses throughout her new fashion line.
Her Popidia collection for the show was a tribute to Queen Idia of Benin, the only West African warrior queen from the Niger Delta.
“She epitomizes the African woman, strong and dependable,” says Ekpecham, who returned to her roots for inspiration for the new line.
As a child growing up in Benin and Port Harcourt, she wanted to become a doctor. She graduated with a degree in microbiology, but her love for fashion and Asoke fabrics overtook all academic pursuits. Her visits to the markets and her Ghanaian tailor, who gave life to her sketches, became more frequent. After a brief stint as a computer analyst, Ekpecham married at the age of 28, and between changing nappies, tailored wedding gowns and traditional outfits out of her garage.
Describing herself “a passionate go-getter”, Ekpecham’s goal is to start her own manufacturing unit in Lagos in 2015. London is only a six-hour flight away, and the new venture will see her returning home more often.
<h1>Riding A Wave</h1>
Noni Rwaxa, better known as the radio jockey ‘Ms Cosmo’, who hosts The Stir Up hip hop show on radio station 5FM, is now part of a collaborative campaign between Australian jewelry firm Mimco and Frends to promote – what else – headphones.
The 26-year-old radio personality, also a veejay on Channel O, has opened for big artists like Kanye West, Chris Brown, Kendrick Lamar and 2 Chainz.
Her family wanted her to take on the tried and tested route through education. She had other plans.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-29665 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_3007-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_3007-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_3007-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_3007-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_3007-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_3007-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_3007.jpg 682w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
“My father’s concern was for me to get a tertiary qualification. I graduated with a BCom degree in finance from the University of Johannesburg; my mother still finds it amusing when I pack my equipment for an event,” says Rwaxa.
After graduating, she worked as a property finance consultant. The time she spent in the corporate space is a period she describes as the worst, as she suffered depression. It was clearly not for her.
Hip hop musician Khuli Chana suggested she join the Fuse Academy school for female disc jockeys. She enrolled and after the course, made inroads in radio in 2012. She was invited to play on Channel O Bassment, and YFM, a South African youth radio station. She finally joined 5FM hosting The Stir Up.
“I’m happy the projections for radio in South Africa are positive. That said, I can’t ignore what is happening in Ghana, Kenya and particularly Nigeria. Nigerian artists are collaborating with international acts. Nat-C, Davido and P-Square are breaking boundaries putting in the hard work to reap rewards.”
She wants to be in the industry for the long haul, and is doing everything to ensure the longevity of her brand.
“I have sought partnerships with various brands for growth for myself and the brand of choice, as hip hop is cool influential culture…I have two other event deals I want to announce but you will have to wait until January.”
Watch this space for more.

Tag: DJ

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

DJ Zinhle: The ‘Lazy Kid’ Who Achieved Platinum Success

Zedd – The $85 Million Classically Trained DJ

Designs On Africa