DJ Okapi

Afrosynth Records is a Johannesburg-based record label and store. Digging up rare grooves in the city of gold, DJ Okapi brings a forgotten era of South African pop music back to life. Listen to his mix featuring a few tracks by South African disco star Kamazu at 10 am + pm CET. 

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🌐 "Outsiders" is our daily show hosted by global independent record labels 
📡 Connect with the Outsiders, every day, at 10 am or 10 pm CET
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Outsiders: Afrosynth Records w/ DJ Okapi ft. Kamazu @ Kiosk Radio 30.03.2021

Afrosynth is back with DJ Okapi today focusing on the legendary eighties bubblegum singer and label affiliate Ntombi Ndaba.

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🌐 "Outsiders" is our daily show hosted by global independent record labels
📡 Connect with the Outsiders, every day, at 10 am or 10 pm CET
🔗 https://kioskradio.com

Outsiders: Afrosynth w/ DJ Okapi feat. Ntombi Ndaba @ Kiosk Radio 30.07.2021

Afrosynth's DJ Okapi presents Chicco, a key figure, charismatic solo star and talented producer from South Africa’s 1980 bubblegum scene. 

🌐 "Outsiders" is our daily show hosted by global independent record labels
📡 Connect with the Outsiders, every day, at 10 am or 10 pm CET
🔗 https://kioskradio.com


Outsiders: Afrosynth Records w/ DJ Okapi ft. Chicco @ Kiosk Radio 30.11.2021

Instead of following trends, DJ Okapi has made it his mission to preserve and share a forgotten era of South African pop music, specifically the infectious sounds of synth-fuelled ‘80s ‘bubblegum’ disco and the house-driven kwaito grooves of the ‘90s. DJing since the early 2000s, Okapi started Afrosynth as a blog documenting his record collection. From 2016 to 2000 he ran a record store in downtown Johannesburg. Afrosynth now functions primarily as a reissue label, putting out classic South African sounds, as well as new jazz, via Rush Hour in Amsterdam. In the process he has helped bring artists like Ntombi Ndaba and Kamazu back to the international stage. Recently returned to Cape Town, the city of his birth, after more than a decade in Johannesburg, Okapi has shared his unique and soulful sound throughout Europe as well as Asia and Brazil. He has also compiled popular vinyl collections of South African music for Rush Hour, Soundway and Cultures of Soul.

DJ Okapi (Afrosynth Records)

🍿 Full hour episode now streaming on YouTube:

Ep09: DJ Okapi

DJ Okapi, founder of Afrosynth Records, is widely respected as one of the key figures preserving South Africa’s electronic, bubblegum, and kwaito heritage. More than a DJ, he’s an archivist and connector, unearthing lost South African sounds from the ’80s and ’90s while championing a new wave of local jazz artists — like Mabuta and Ayanda Sikade — through his New Horizons compilation series, pressed on vinyl and distributed worldwide by @rushhourrecords in Amsterdam.

Afrosynth began as a blog in 2009–2010, with deep dives into disco, funk, bubblegum, and early kwaito that helped put these sounds back on the map for collectors, DJs, and reissue labels globally. The label naturally grew from that archival work.

A vital connector and collector, Okapi ran the legendary Afrosynth record shop in downtown Johannesburg before returning to Cape Town, where you’ll now find him DJing at venues like Gorgeous George and The Commons, or digging up vinyl treasures at local record fairs. His sets are living archives — a dance floor journey through priceless holy grails and bargain-bin surprises, all stitched together with groove and deep knowledge

Instagram: https://bit.ly/46XFcCl
Afrosynth Bandcamp: https://bit.ly/4m6g9kP
Afrosynth Soundcloud: @afrosynth 
Afrosynth blog: https://bit.ly/4mdscgv

The Feeling - A project where artists are encouraged to explore their collections and share the sounds that resonate, linger, and most importantly, give them, The Feeling.

The series comprises 16 one-hour episodes rolling out over the next 8 months (2 episodes per month), showcasing some of my favorite artists, DJs, and colleagues from the Cape Town and South African music scenes.

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Find The Feeling series:

Instagram: https://bit.ly/4iD7C7P
TikTok: https://bit.ly/4j6PWRC

Shoemaker 
Instagram: https://bit.ly/42PRB6A  
TikTok: https://bit.ly/41TN98N

Equipment and lighting provided by MyOh!My Entertainment: https://bit.ly/4lvhIcT

Filmed at Soundcast Studios, Cape Town, South Africa: https://bit.ly/3DYzqV7

Follow the 🔗 in bio to watch the full episode and others 🥤🍿

The Feeling: Ep 09 - DJ Okapi

@afrosynth
afrosynth.blogspot.it
berlincommunityradio.com/cooking-palms-trax
mixcloud.com/BCR_Radio/

Cooking With Palms Trax 022 ft. Dj Okapi

For full video + more goodness, head here: blrrm.tv/okapi

DJ Okapi Boiler Room London DJ Set

We are thrilled to host perhaps our biggest DJ yet in South Africa's, DJ Okapi. When we set out to do this show, this is the exact type of DJ we were looking to feature, someone showcasing sounds you would be sure to not hear elsewhere - even for South Africans themselves, this is some heady music. Digging up rare vinyl grooves in the city of gold, DJ Okapi brings a forgotten era of South African pop music (back) to life. Recently headlining a Boiler Room show, amongst other things, this is definitely a DJ that deserves your attention, and more importantly the music he plays is a sound that deserves your attention.

night market

Episode 5 - DJ Okapi

After starting the mini Dekmantel Selectors podcast series last year, we couldn’t resist continuing it with artists from this year’s line-up. In the next couple of months, we will release 5 podcasts by some of our favourite artists. This year’s podcast theme is all about ‘another side of me’, wherein the artists show another side of theirselves.

Following up A Good Christian’s stunning podcast from two weeks ago is DJ Okapi (Dave Durbach). The South-African DJ and selector is known for running his Afrosynth-blog and playing fantastic collection of African flavored music all over the world. His performance at Dekmantel Selectors in August marks his debut on Dekmantel-grounds, so we are honoured to have an amazing warm-up with his contribution to our series.

With his Selectors Podcast for us, Dave shows another side of himself by playing none African tracks only. "These days I can get away with playing only South African music, but I used to be focused more on American music. Here’s a selection of tracks that complement the Afrosynth sound but are all from outside Africa, from remote and exotic corners of the world like the USA and UK, by artists like Aurra, Ashford & Simpson, Marcus Miller, Bernard Wright, Alphonse Mouzon, Rock Steady Crew and The Rose Brothers. Hope you enjoy it.”

Selectors Podcast

Selectors Podcast 012 - DJ Okapi

Recording of DJ Okapi's set at Dekmantel Selectors 2017.

Dekmantel Selectors 2017

DJ Okapi at Dekmantel Selectors 2017

3+ hours of South African goods! Avid SA music collectors DJ Okapi (Afrosynth records, Rush Hour) and Dene Kadej-Ibarra (La Casa Tropical) play their current favorites during a special broadcast. Expect loads of music that you might have not heard before...

This is the third recording in a series of (themed) Rush Hour in-store broadcasts, recorded on December 3rd, 2017. After a live broadcast to Facebook, the music lands on Soundcloud for playback.

Store Broadcast 004 | South Africa special w/ DJ Okapi & Dene Kadej-Ibarra

AGOG mix jan17

DIM076 - DJ Okapi

Recorded live on the beach at Dimensions 2017.

DIM093 - DJ Okapi (Live 2017)

DJ Okapi (@afrosynth) DJ set at El cuerpo del Disco, berlínClub (@bclubmadrid), on October 6th 2018.

Dj Okapi at El cuerpo del Disco (berlínClub, Madrid)

Digging up rare vinyl grooves in the city of gold, DJ Okapi brings a forgotten era of South African pop music back to life...

Specifically the synth-fuelled 80s disco-funk known as bubblegum and the unique house-inspired kwaito grooves of the early 90s, connecting them to their contemporaries in other parts of Africa and its diaspora.

DJ Okapi
--> @afrosynth
--> https://www.facebook.com/OkapiDJ/

living room sept18

#33 - DJ OKAPI

Afrosynth blog runner, noted digger and Cultures of Soul's right hand man DJ Okapi came through with some S.A. rarities to keep London grooving.

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►www.facebook.com/kioskradiobxl 
►www.mixcloud.com/KioskRadio/

DJ Okapi @ Kiosk Radio - 27.11.2017

Dj Okapi at Jaeger Oslo
live recording 04/09/2019

I have to tune the car radio manually to get to the place I want to be on Cape Town’s FM bandwidth. The seek button scans over the desired channel even though I’m just a few blocks away from the broadcasting headquarters. Immediately, the old, but familiar hiss of white noise transports me back to my youth and then it pops into life as I get to 89.5. A two-step punchy snare and a syllabic yelping in Zulu greets me on the other side, this sounds more like home.

“You have to listen to Bush Radio” a friend told me the night before, “if you want to hear South African music”. For the past week I’ve been driving around my hometown listening to the ubiquitous sounds of popular music from Europe and USA proliferated by the nationally syndicated stations like 5FM. This has always been the case in South Africa and notwithstanding the community focussed programming from small, inconspicuous stations like Bush Radio, this has remained the broadcasting practise for the most part of my adult life too.

Every time I return to South Africa I’m always astounded and dismayed how very little has changed in that regard, even when in Europe, South African music is being proliferated by DJs and radio everywhere. The sound of GQOM, the band BCUC, a revival of seventies era Fusion, and the newfound interest in the eighties bubblegum sound had all been largely instigated and promoted through European labels and record stores in recent years.

Limited by constricts like the lack of vinyl presses to re-issue music and the fact that most of the original records are harboured in European record collections, it’s obvious why this has happened, but it doesn’t look set to remain this way for much longer. In recent years a DJ, a blog, a label and a record store has come along, all dedicated to changing this, bringing South African music back home and making availeable on the vinyl format again. It all funnels down to one man, Dave Durbach, better known by his DJ alias Okapi, who is tirelessly and selflessly, collecting and re-distributing this music through Afro-Synth, a blog, store and record label dedicated to new and forgotten South African music.

Hailing from Cape Town, where he cut his teeth around the bars and clubs in the small scene around Long Street, playing everything from Hip Hop to Jazz, Dave had always been known as something of a “vinyl junkie” by the locals. At a time when the format was largely forgotten for the more accessible digital formats, Dave would haunt the used record shops in and around Cape Town for obscure records from the eighties. The records largely disregarded as disposable “bubblegum” music by a predominantly white music media, became an obsession for the latent digger in his teens and laid the foundations for what would later become Afro Synth; a blog dedicated to shedding new light on a lost era in South Africa’s rich music history.

Afro Synth garnered attention for its unique and largely untapped source of records from from an apartheid-era South Africa with considered reviews and articles about the artists and the records sound tracking the end of white-minority rule and the first exciting years of post-apartheid South Africa. These were the talented, mostly black artists that remained obscure for the longest time, pressing limited runs of their records on independent labels that were quickly assigned to bargain bins all over SA. He established the blog to highlight these finds and through his words, many South Africans (this writer included) were lead on an extensive journey of discovery through a very niche, and almost forgotten corner of music history.

Dj Okapi at Jaeger Oslo - live recording 04/09/2019

Radio Radio - DJ Okapi

First Sounds Of Yeke mix for 2020! Kicking the year off with a DJ and collector I've been a long time fan of, but who I met on a recent trip to South Africa: DJ Okapi 🇿🇦 

'Digging up rare grooves in the city of gold, DJ Okapi brings a forgotten era of South African pop music back to life, turning a new generation on to the synth-fuelled ‘80s disco known as bubblegum and the downtempo kwaito grooves of the ‘90s. Based in Maboneng in downtown Johannesburg, he runs the record store and label Afrosynth Records and has compiled collections of South African music for Rush Hour, Soundway and Cultures of Soul. Since 2016 he has been playing regularly throughout Europe and as far afield as China, Russia and Brazil.'

@afrosynth 

TRACKLIST: 
‘Ma Dea Luv' - JE Movement 
Paulina - Benjamin Ball
Mjukeit - Kamazu 
Witch Doctor - Patricia Majalisa
Ta Duma'(12” version) - Obed Ngobeni & The Kurhula Sisters
Help Me I'm Burning (Jika Jika)’ - Kaya

Enjoy this 30 minute bubblegum filled SA history lesson from a stalwart of Johannesburgs collectors scene! 🗺 💿

Sounds Of Yeke: DJ Okapi

Vol. 4
DJ Okapi (https://soundcloud.com/afrosynth + https://www.mixcloud.com/afrosynth/stream/) 
www.purplenoon.co

Recorded in Johannesburg, South Africa with Technics SL1200mk2, Gemini TT02 and a Omnitronic TRM-202 mk3 mixer.

Jazz/Fusion, New Age, Soul and Bubblegum

Art of Noise - Moments in Love  / Prof Guy A. Elliot - Acute Respiratory Failure
Mick Jade - Another Day 
Debbie Lan - Outlines 
Richard Souther - Uncharted Waters 
Wired to the Floor  - Why Make it Harder 
John Capek and the Family of Man ft. Nana Coyote - When it All Comes Down 
The Genuines - Doctor Love
Ruben Beewa - Just a Matter of Time 
Steely Dan - Home at Last
Brian Eno & David Byrne - America is Waiting
Kalahari Surfers - Don’t Dance
Manfred Mann’s Earth Band - Brothers and Sisters 
Margaret Singana - Tired of Being Alone
The Times - Lonely Man 
Hey Fever - The Sneezing Song
Ozila - Wola Wola