Adam Haupt spoke to musician and world traveller DLow about his new album and his boempies hairstyle
Many people in Portlands, Mitchells Plain, know the R&B singer DLow (Deen Louw) as the organiser of the Rhyme Unit Feed the Needy feeding scheme, which serves many people in the area. However, his two identities are not separate ones because Low ultimately hopes that his musical career will be successful enough for him to build a shelter for homeless children. Looking back at the circumstances under which he became a musician, its not hard to see why his heart is still with the community.
DLows relationship with music goes way back to his childhood days in Phillipi when his father, who was a bass singer, encouraged him and his siblings to sing. His father, says Low, used to love to show his musical kids off to his friends and music really was a way of making the poverty they lived in bearable.
Fortunately, Low recalls, his father could speak some African languages and he could always ask his African neighbours for help when times got rough. Things became so dire that when he was 10 years old he left home to work for I&J as a cabin boy. He hoped to raise money for his family and, specifically, his mother, who needed treatment for womb cancer. Despite being well below the legal age he managed to convince a neighbour to write a letter of request under the pretence of being his parent.
When he returned two months later his mother died. He went on to work for some Chinese people for about eight years and travelled to places like Mauritius, Singapore and Rio de Janeiro. This is why DLow is able to speak two dialects of Chinese fairly fluently. In fact, his debut album features a song that he sings in Chinese.
He really started to see the world when he joined Safmarine. During these years, says Low, he kept his music alive by going to night clubs to dance and sing. He points out that this is what he did to chill out on his days off because he doesnt smoke or drink. It was on one of these nights out in New York that he met an American who told him: Listen here, youre a singer and not a sailor. So next time you come to New York Ill have a present for you.
When he returned to New York six months later the American handed him a guitar. After six years I still have the guitar. Its still in a good condition and Im still making music with that guitar and producing nice ideas.
Back on the African continent DLow worked with the Swazi performer Dezzie B (now known as Keenya) and toured Southern Africa. These experiences have been valuable because he learned much about the industry from Dezzie B. Many years back he also performed with The Zombies with his brother, John.
He recalls that John often got annoyed with him for laughing when he played the guitar. Its not that he was a rotten guitarist, he says, but just that it was hard to concentrate on singing when John played so well and played so much in the style of George Benson and Earl Klugh. Low hopes the breakthrough he is experiencing at the moment will inspire his brother to return to the music industry because John had a huge influence on him as a budding musician.
During his nights out at clubs he got the idea of making himself memorable to people as a singer by getting a nice, funny, funny hairstyle so that everybody would look at me and laugh at me and go home and say thats a nice hairstyle. He points out that people have called him names like spykers, boempies, lollipop, ice-cream, island and apple tree.
If not for his music, he thought, people would at least remember him for his hairstyle. But his music is memorable and so are his live performances. Anyone who can get a Cape Town audience to sing along with a song in Chinese has got to have more than a funky hairdo. D Lows single, If Ever, is doing well on the charts at Good Hope FM and Radio Metro. Another single will be released in January. His debut album, to be released in February, reflects the cosmopolitan life he has had as it shifts through English, Xhosa, Afrikaans, Spanish, and Chinese.
There is much collaboration on the album and it is produced and co-composed by Shaheen Ariefdien of Prophets of da City (POC). It seems that POCs own commitment to Cape Flats musicians is being made good through DLow and the Ghetto Ruff Family, which includes talented hip hop artists such as Azanian B-Boys, Brasse vannie Kaap, 4 Feet Deep, Skeem, Hala and O Da Meesta. DLow is the logical extension of the Ghetto ruff family. He is the lyrical, soulful, endearingly soft counterbalance to the more hardcore stable members.