The edition of this year’s Southern African Music Conference came to an astounding end in Jozi as DJ’s, musicians, producers, and industry experts shared knowledge and their experiences with the audience that had come to grasp whatever they needed from this great pool of information.

Beginning on Monday, the programme comprised the world’s biggest movers and shakers in the dance music fraternity. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend until the final day, resulting in my missing of a supposedly breathtaking and innovative session where Black Coffee and Culoe De Song created and finished a song from scratch in just 30 minutes. I also missed out on the entertaining and eye-opening presentation by ANCYL president Julius Malema. However, I did catch some of the talks from Chris Palmer, Victor Mampane, DJ Zinhle and Nomndeni (from the Fuze Academy), as well as a jubilant demo listening session.

Chris Palmer and Christos

Chris Palmer, a world-renowned sound engineer, shared his valuable knowledge working with sound over the years. He emphasised the importance of following the rules when creating sounds. Having learned the tricks over years, he also re-iterated how music and sound go together and there cannot be one without the other.

Victor Mampane and Christos

Following Chris was SAMRO representative Victor Mampane who spoke about three types of music rights creatives need to be aware of. These are namely performance rights (for live events licenses), mechanical rights (for reproduction of work) and middle rights (for people who don’t write music, but perform the music). During the Q&A session an audience member asked what the funeral policy is if a man is married to more than two wives, which everybody found hilarious.

DJ Zinhle and Nomndeni

The Feminine Touch ladies joined the stage to talk about the power of social media. DJ Zinhle and Nomndeni alternated highlighting how important this medium is for artists to promote their work, interact with their audience and strengthen their brand presence. The presentation was very inspirational, well put together, insightful and entertaining. To tie everything up, DJ Zinhle played her new, highly experimental video for the song Pepe, starring comedians David Kau (also acting as director f the video) and Chris Mapane.

During demo listening session

Then DJ Fresh, Christos, Oskido, Halo, Rulf Gum and MP3 Sound representative conducted a demo listening session. They constructively critiqued songs they had collected from wanna-be producers and DJ’s. Majority of the remarks were surprisingly very positive, which just places testament to the solid and fantastic talent Mzansi has.

I’m definitely going to make sure that I’m there at next years conference, from the very beginning. For just the one day I attended, I gained a lot of insight and knowledge on what goes on behind the scenes in the music industry. I applaud Greg Maloka, Oskido and the rest of the team for putting together this awesome event every year. It’s a wonderful way to share and maintain conversations that should be held amongst all the stakeholders in the music business.