Local House Music outfit set for Miami

Bulawayo's new house music outfit comprising Mqondisi Sibanda, Paul Mlauziand Brian Bangura collectively known as House Rebels are set to rub shoulders with the world's biggest house music producers, djs and singers at this year's Miami Winter Conference in the USA. The conference will take place from the 21st - 30th March at the Miami Beach in Florida.

Established in 1985, the Winter Miami Conference is in its 29th consecutive year and is one of the most publicised annual music gathering in the world. The conference attracts thousands of artists, music industry delegates from 70 countries and over 100,000 event attendees each year for a concentrated schedule of more than 500 events, parties, seminars and workshops.

House Rebels become the first Zimbabwean outfit to be invited to perform at the winter conferences which over the last couple of years has seen more African representation coming from South Africa from the likes of DJ Fresh, Euphonik, Black Coffee, Culoe De Song and Oskido who have been regular attendees of the conference.

Speaking to The Chronicle, 23 year old Mlauzi, better known as Mzoe 7 said "at first when we got the news via a phone call, we thought it was a prank call but when all the documentation was sent to our manager, it hit home that it was real".  House Rebels who believe that their hard work is finally paying off said "we have been in the music industry for almost 6 years and we have never stopped working hard, neither did we stop believing that our music was destined for great heights. This is not only our joy but it is also our city Bulawayo and our country's joy to share with. We will be out there flying the Zim flag high. It's a very proud moment for us" said Mqondisi, popularly known as Skaiva.

The group said that one of their main goals was to perform at this year's NAMA awards in Bulawayo. We may not be as big as Winky D, other urban groove artists or Siyaya in their genres but we believe that we are big enough in our genre and we can provide something different to the awards. No one seems to know which artists will be performing and a lot of artists from Bulawayo are asking each other the same question.

The rumour mill started spinning 5 weeks ago that most artists that are going to perform were from Harare and three weeks ago we decided to write a letter to the National Arts Council enquiring to be in the lineup and delivered another letter officially proposing to the NAMAS organising committee, offering our services to perform and showcase what Bulawayo has to offer.

In these letters, we enclosed a copy of our music and Dvd that has not been released and took the letters to the National Arts Council offices in Bulawayo and until today none of the parties have responded to us. One then wonder what letters these organisations will respond to, if they can not respond to us artists about a national event that should involve us, more-so being held in Bulawayo. Yesterday we decided to send the same letters, music and dvd to the Harare offices, maybe we could at least get a response from there"said 27 year old Bangura who is also known as Rakeem. One wonders how our event organisers overlook our own local artists and talent yet people overseas capitalise on their talent and want to expose them to the world.

Credit has been given to Gibson Ncube of ZiFM who listerned to House Rebels's song Godobori immediately after its production and the radio presenter predicted the song to be a hit. Skaiva said "we approached Gibson and asked him to sample the track and let us know if it was fit for airplay and in less than a minute he asked us if we knew what we had cooked up. Gibson said Godobori was goin to be huge hit and that weekend, he profiled us on his Saturday radio show. The song got a lot of great response and people started requesting it. It was on Gibson's show that someone in the UK heard the song and requested to license and release the song internationally. Whilst still waiting for documentation, the call from Miami came through and the guy said he had just received a sample of our song Godobori and he said he had a proposal. He asked how many songs we have and if we would be interesting in perfoming at this year's Miami Conference. We honestly couldn't believe it and we don't know if the UK based contact had something to do with this or not, but what we know is that, if Gibson had not played Godobori on ZiFM, we would not be going to Miami"

House Rebels producer Skaiva is not new to cracking the international market. The 23 year old produced a track called Daydreamer featuring Rakeem and the song was signed by Soul Candi records in South Africa and released internationally last year on online digital stores and on Cd under Funkdeep Star Compilation. International house music producers like Julian Gomez and Chynamusique remixed Daydreamer and it was number one for 3 months on Hot 99 on Metro Fm in South Africa.
 
Skaiva's music is set to be released internationally in July by Peng Africa, a record label run by UK based legendary house music producer Andy Compton and Bulawayo's born and raised Mthulisi Patrick Khuphe.  The UK record label has signed Skaiva song "Its Love" that features the vocals of RudoAmor and will be released on cd, vinyl and on online music stores.

House rebels are set to officially realease the video of Godobori on social media platforms tonight. The video produced by Vusa Blaqs Hlatshwayo tries to remind people of their cultural values instead of invented cultural beliefs that have taken away our spirit of "UBUNTU". The video shows 2  troubled young man travelling in search for a GODOBORI as they want to know the culture and ways of their forefathers.