Everything Local caught up with one of Cape Town’ s very own … Grandmaster Ready D. We asked him about his love for music, drifting, and how it all began.
Good Evening D, thank you for taking the time to chat to us.
You’ re welcome man, thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to chat with you.
D, please will you tell us where it all began for you? You know what aya, I’ m always telling people I grew up in a musical community, and I think it probably all started before I was born. You know, because music is all around us. I was born and bred in District 6, it’ s a community that was driven by music, and I think, because there was so much going on in the house, in the road, in the community, there’ s always a rhythm that’ s been out there. I was lucky to be exposed to a whole lot of different genres. My dad used to play guitar, not as a professional, you know, just as a guy that used to entertain family and friends. Opposite our house we had the guys who used to practise for the koon carnival. We had the Christmas choirs that came to our place. I used to attend church, I was heavily involved in church, so there’ s music in church as well, so it’ s been all over the place. I’ m always telling people, you know the whole thing with Hip-Hop and rhyming is a part of who we were. We were telling jokes in rhyme form as kids, even before we knew this thing was going to become Hip-Hop, you know. It was going to evolve into this whole thing, Hip- Hop as we know it now, so I would say it was deeply entrenched in our DNA.
How did you get involved with POC? With POC and with Hip-Hop, I got involved through DJ’ ing, been a beat boy and been a graph writer( Graffiti artist), so we were quite active in the early 80’ s. I would say we were the first generation of Hip-Hop heads. We then went from the streets into this club called“ Club Teasers”( lol, not the strip joint). Club Teasers used to be pretty much I would say a“ white” club that was cutting edge for the time. They were heavy into rock, they were into, I’ d say rock and reggae music, heavy metal and punk vibes, and us dancing on the Grand Parade dancing as bee boys, you know every Saturday we used to take the train to town, to go battle or just dance, until the security or the police would chase us away, and we had friends, believe it or not, you know so called coloured friends who used to hang out with the Punk Rockers, and they told us about this club.