Southern Africa-born and UK-raised, Charisse C has been collecting the old and new sounds of her Zimbabwean and South African heritage for a while now, and is always on the lookout for new ways and places to present her findings. Her No Signal radio show acts as a kind of directory for the African diaspora, faithfully detailing the history of region-specific genres, from the Zulu folk sounds of maskandi to the popular protest songs of chimurenga. And though she\u2019s also been known to throw down the odd gqom mix, it\u2019s clear that amapiano is where her heart is at. In fact, Charisse C is helping turn Europe on to the sound, one listener at a time.<\/p>\n
The DJ recounts a recent conversation with a taxi driver in Ibiza, who happened to be playing SA house as she approached his car. \u201cHe asked me if I liked the music and what kind of music I play, and I said the best way to explain it is to just play it for you,\u201d she remembers. The driver handed Charisse his phone as they made their way through San Antonio and she played Kabza De Small\u2019s \u2018Rekere 2\u2019. \u201cHe was like, \u2018Woah, this is beautiful\u2019 and started screenshotting all the tracks I played. We were driving past Amnesia and he was like, \u2018Maybe one day you\u2019ll come back and I\u2019ll see you playing there\u2019. It was a really lovely moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Charisse was writing about music long before she started DJing. By age 15, she was sharing thoughts on music blogs and by 16 editing the work of others. Trips from her home in Reading to shows in London brought her into regular contact with other creatives and soon enough she made the capital home, taking up a journalism degree south of the river.<\/p>\n
Some of her first DJ outings were open format \u2014 and she even had a short stint with a gospel house choir \u2014 but by 2019, amapiano had taken centre stage. This meant that when amapiano hit the UK in the summer of 2021, she was more than ready to meet the demand. \u201cThere\u2019s so much room in this one genre and it\u2019s given me so much freedom,\u201d she tells DJ Mag. \u201cIt\u2019s freedom music because people are making it out of struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mid-tempo and intricately layered grooves of this sound, nurtured for over a decade in SA townships, have quite literally shifted UK dancefloors, and for Charisse, it couldn\u2019t be more perfectly timed. \u201cI think amapiano is one of the biggest music phenomena,\u201d she tells us, \u201cand what I\u2019ve been working towards is for it to be programmed among a wider umbrella of music. I\u2019m always trying to push new things and play in places that wouldn\u2019t normally have someone like me play there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having finally received her British citizenship during lockdown, Charisse is now able to cast a wider net, playing sets in Ibiza, Amsterdam and South Africa this year alone. But Charisse\u2019s ambitions lie further than the dancefloor. Having noted the strong musical roots laid down by the West Indian and West African diasporas in the UK, she believes amapiano could play a similar role for second-generation Southern Africans like her. \u201cWhen you think about the huge influence Jamaica has on the everyday life of Black British culture and the presence of West African music in Black British identity, it\u2019s easy to find a lot of touch points,\u201d she explains. \u201cAmapiano has created a significant touch point for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Get acquainted with Charisse C, the Southern Africa-born, UK-raised DJ embracing amapiano’s unifying power<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12963,"featured_media":17254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,31],"tags":[7,14,32],"class_list":{"0":"post-17257","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"category-music","9":"tag-apie-project","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"yoast_head":"\n