Vanco Was Never Meant to Be an Afro-Tech Producer

Vanco's journey has been a series of false starts, accidental turns, and calculated shifts that have all paid off in the long run. "My dream was to go to Dubai and eventually build stuff [there], and come back home — the whole corporate ladder," he tells OkayAfrica.

But life had other plans for the producer and deejay, who has been booked and busy since his collaboration with the Gulf Arab singer AYA on "Ma Tnsani (Yalla Habibi)." The track found its way onto every deejay-worth-their-salt's set, was remixed by Tiësto, and racked up tens of millions of streams along the way.

Vanco is a student of the game whose music knowledge runs deep, and it's as though he's been plotting for this life since day one. He started out as a dancer, became a deejay, then a beatmaker — gathering ideas, sounds, and rhythm combinations all along that he'd later need to draw on.

The first track he ever released was "Regeneration." Cuebar — a fellow producer and one of Vanco's earliest collaborators — chose it. "Cuebar played a big role in my career. He's the first guy who showed me so much technical stuff. Even him wanting to collaborate with me while I was still unknown. He chose the first record that I dropped in my career, and it went number one on Traxsource for a month. I didn't know what that meant; I was at work, and my phone was buzzing," he recalls.

"When [Cuebur] heard ‘Regeneration,’ he said to me, 'You're gonna mix this song.' I said, 'I don't know how to mix.' And he taught me, basically. It's still on Traxsource right now. I never looked back. I'm still in touch with him; he's my brother."

His relationship to jazz runs deeper. "I love jazz, in general. I'm friends with a lot of jazz players. I've made songs with Nduduzo Makhathini; he's a grootman (elder), a good uncle to me. There's also Luyanda Madope, I've been in sessions with him. For some reason, I've always been intrigued by jazz music, because my granddad used to say to me, 'all these things that people are doing stem from jazz and the blues,'" he says.

One of his biggest songs to date, "Lutho," features jazz artist Njabulo Seh on vocals. The two used to play basketball together, and decided to hit the studio one day when they weren't on the court.

"That was another break for me. I had a moment internationally because Black Coffee played the remix by DJEFF, and deejays were playing the original in the hood, on the radio. I shot a video, it was charting on MTV Base and Channel O. I had a moment," he says.

His connection to jazz and jazz musicians isn't fleeting, and didn't end at "Lutho." Around the same time, "Ya Na Pula" went into regular rotation. It features Troy, a fireman by day, a businessman, and a deep lover of jazz and Afropop.

"I've never wanted to work with someone who only does dance music. I've always felt like I need to dig deeper because dance is a combination of so many genres. Same story: got linked by a family friend, Ricardo. It came about a year later. I was having great moments for myself too," he says.

Before global acclaim came knocking, local nods kept him relevant in the streets and on the charts. Vanco had been consistently booked since he started taking music seriously around 2015.

"Between late 2014 and 2018, I played at every kasi (hood) in Gauteng you can think of, and almost every corner of the country, almost all the places that matter. I played for free, I played for money," he says. "From 5:30 AM to 6 PM, I'm a corporate guy. Then, Thursday until Sunday, I'm out. Sometimes we come back early hours of Monday morning. I never drank, I never smoked, I never did any drugs. I was always on the water and the juice game."

He'd be on site a couple of hours later, surviving on coffee, Red Bull, and pure vibes from the night prior.

At times, the profession and the passion intersected, like when he was commissioned to design the space for the first Deep In The City, a dance music event held in Johannesburg. "That was my first tender, to transform it from a school into a restaurant vibe. That was my ticket to freedom in terms of time, and just upping the bag in real estate. I got a chance to play there two times, too. No one really knew," he says.

He was careful not to disclose the deejaying aspect of his life because his mind was set on building a corporate career.

That all changed in 2018.

"I took myself to the Amsterdam Dance Event on a break from work. I'd been dropping tunes prior to that, like ‘Lutho,’” he says.

People recognized him there, due to the music he'd been putting out on different, well-respected labels in the dance scene — the likes of Get Physical, Foliage Records, and Afrocentric Records. It was important for him to be seen and understood by the community he cared so deeply about.

"I was very adamant that I wasn't gonna release with a label that I didn't feel had credibility. In Amsterdam, I was playing for free, and people embraced me so well. I felt that home was good, but there's a life that I'd always dreamt about, of traveling," he says. He then recalls a recently surfaced video of Black Coffee talking about his own dreams of playing worldwide like Louie Vega and his peers. "I used to be crazier than that — not to compare or anything. That Amsterdam trip was the answer for me."

He got booked in Dubai and Angola the same year, and his schedule made it difficult to balance his other personal and professional responsibilities. He also reconnected with his now-ex-fiancée that year and was actively looking to take an entirely different direction.

"She came at a point where I was like, I wanna plan my life, I wanna move into this music thing, be done with work. I wanna get married. I knew it was crazy; I was 26/27 at the time. She was my friend throughout 2018. By December, I knew she was the person I wanted to spend my life with at that point."

He had a house, a car, and had managed to build a fairly secure life — ticked all the boxes, essentially. He broke the news to his business partners and walked away scot-free. He left everything on the floor, demanding no money for his shares.

"I took a leap of faith," he says.

The Leap of Faith: Vanco’s Evolution from Corporate Professional to International Producer

In practice, this looked like him booking his own tours and getting paid next to nothing for the gigs he'd do overseas. He ensured that his flights and accommodation were always taken care of by whoever was bringing him in.

"I'd ask deejays how they were doing it, and saw how other people were doing it. I mirrored how agencies do bookings for artists, and I'd create a template for myself," he says.

I suggest to him that Black Coffee was doing the exact same thing a decade and a half ago. "I played in France, and the guy was like, 'I like your drive, you remind me of Nathi,'" he shares, referring to Black Coffee, whose government name is Nathi Maphumulo. "I like what he's done, and he's supported my music a lot. I respect him, I look at him as a malume (uncle). At that time, I'd not met him. I felt his energy from afar. There are certain parts of myself that I see in him."

“My question has always been, ‘what’s gonna make my song different?’ Without people explaining, it needs to speak for itself. So I sat down and listed common elements, and ones I don’t hear in the music. The elements I didn’t hear, that became my sound. 

"I've always seen myself playing electronic music, but for a vast and multidimensional crowd in terms of race and culture. I've never liked being boxed for the longest time. I've been searching for this sound that I feel like I'm making right now," he says. "Just because you're an African guy making electronic music doesn't mean you're an Afro-tech/Afro-house producer. Don't box me."

His current single with DEELA is climbing the charts. "Tell me, you feel the beat," says the artist in a voice lost somewhere between a shout and a whisper. She keeps going: "softly, caress my tender skin," a gentle ask anchored in the airy, reverb'd-out keys that sit—no, float—atop a deep bassline and kicks that don't so much push through the mix as they do support every other element. Slight percussive elements flow in and out of the song, structuring it into a ritualistic, localized form. 

Where DEELA gives us a distinct British Nigerian attitude that channels early-2000s aesthetics and transports that feeling into the present, Vanco attempts a reversal: bringing the sound home to South Africa and giving it a ceremonial baptism befitting of glory. They meet in the middle, making "Repeat" one of this year's most exciting releases. 

“She was just messing around. She’s a good writer, a good emcee.  The melody inspired me to come up with the music. We were done with the session in less than an hour, and then I kept adding other elements,” he says. 

“It has become a thing now. I get to the studio, I don’t plan anything. Just bump music. If the energy is right, we create.”

Looking back now, the ecosystem that produced talent like Vanco is becoming more corporatized, and venues that host cutting-edge music are becoming increasingly hard to find. When nightlife becomes commoditized, the life gets squeezed out of the music, and new ideas arrive already metabolized — pre-sorted into playlist categories, focus-grouped into shorter intros, optimized for the algorithm before they've ever had to convince a dance floor.