Jonape

Bio

At an early age of eleven, a South African young local lad Johannes Nape discovered his flair for house music. His dream of becoming a professional DJ initiated when he constantly listened to various local radio stations. On every occasion when popular DJs were mixing live on the radio Joe was always part of the listeners - but also on the mission: “I would sit down with empty cassette, record their mixes live from the radio, and play them to my friends.” South African DJ Jonape was born in the Township of Soweto, Mapetla. There were two local popular DJs who inspired him to believe in his ability - DJ Digwele (former MetroFM) and Solly Vista. He continued to make his name around Johannesburg playing at family and house parties. His confidence, popularity and skills gradually grew quicker than he anticipated; It got to a point whereby, whenever he turned up at a party unbooked - he would be asked to be on standby: “I remember there was a time when I was about 18/19 years old, I went to see my cousin at Edgars store, they were having a Saturday Stokvel, and before I knew it, I was asked to DJ.” In 1998, Jonape moved to Ga-Rankuwa, North of Pretoria, after he realized that football was distracting his DJing ambition. He described the decision of quitting football as a complicated one, knowing that becoming a professional footballer was his first dream: “I was so convinced that football was the only thing I wanted to do.” In his early days in Pretoria, he met more experienced DJs, such as, Positive K and Dizzy Moff . The pair helped Jonape pretty much with professional skills of playing Vinyls. After two years in Pretoria, Jonape became more popular, not only as a DJ, but a promoter. He hosted most of the popular events around Pretoria during his promoting experience: “I started fly by night Events Company called N.G.C (New Generation Crew) with my friends. Our first event was Miss Cape Velvet, Coca Cola and SAB sponsored the event.” After the success of their debut event Coca Cola and SAB offered them a Cell Phone project and provided them with Coca Cola car to drive artists around during their promotional events. At this stage, Jonape was appointed as a project manager. In the process of promoting events around Pretoria – he bumped into a local producer Gendo from Gendo Production. Together, they carried on doing more events. “We did Freshers balls for University and Technikon around Pretoria. And the last one I did was ‘Jazz Festival’ at Morula Sun where I also worked with the late Dominic ( Rowick Deep’s uncle).” Jonape moved to UK in 2002 hoping to pursue musical career - he met his likely musically minded friend, the late Colin Molebatse (DJ Stacolli) – the duo started collecting Vinyls at a local HMV store in Norwich. But “we didn’t have anywhere to play them.” And few months later, after saving enough money “we bought our first belt draft turntables and a mixer. This is where everything started to move smoothly in the UK.” You can listen to Jonape every Saturday on www.futureradio.co.uk between 5pm & 7pm UK Time http://futureradio.co.uk/shows/mzansishow

Norwich United Kingdom

Member since: 18 Aug 2010