Diane Coetzer
For weeks, I tried to prise a CV out of YFM station manager Randall Abrahams. When I met with him at the station’s funkily appointed offices in Gauteng’s Bez Valley, we never really got to the details of Abrahams’s radio career so far, beyond discussing his early days on the University of Cape Town radio with a then unknown student DJ called Mark Gillman. We touched too on Abrahams’s many years at Cape Town’s Good Hope Radio, where he both presented and produced.
But most of the reason why Abrahams’s career details remained largely undiscussed during our interview and then unfaxed afterwards is simply that they’re just not that important in fleshing out what drives the man guiding South Africa’s most successful regional radio station.
What is crucial to the work and life of this former Landsdowne boy is, quite simply, music. I know that if at any time I need to know what song was top of the Billboard charts this day 18 years back or who played drums with Bill Frisell on his second album, I can call Abrahams, and get an almost instantaneous response.
Abrahams’s love of music is all- consuming and as wide-ranging as a single individual’s musical taste can be. In passing, I asked him what he’d listened to the previous evening at home. Included in the list were Mindy McCreedy, Frank Sinatra, Massive Attack, Lenny Kravitz, Tanya Donnelly, Crowded House and Bonnie Riatt.
I then trawled through Abrahams’s comprehensive computerised list of his thousands of vinyl and CD albums (yes, he’s a little anal about ordering things) and delighted in a collection that includes everything from straight country to pop, hard rock, hip-hop, kwaito, jazz and, of course, probably the biggest collection of Elvis recordings in one place in South Africa.
It is Abrahams’s eat-drink-sleep-music approach that has contributed in no small measure to the stunning success of YFM.
Some figures might help here. Since its launch in October last year, YFM has mushroomed, with some 944 000 audited listeners, outstripping the next largest station, Good Hope FM at 789 000 (a fact which must be more than a little galling for Abrahams’s former bosses).
And, gratifyingly for the station which has been charged with only appealing to the 16- to 24-year-old age-group (read less disposable income), more than half the station’s listeners are aged between 25 and 34, making YFM’s appeal to advertisers even stronger. The station has also managed to build real listener loyalty: most tune in daily.
In all of this, Abrahams is nothing if not hands on. Together with S’bu Nxumalo, he’s responsible for selecting the 1 100 or so songs on rotation at any one time. But here Abrahams has to rein himself in. “YFM is a very hit-driven and very directed radio station,” he explains. “Our playlist is only R&B – and I include hip-hop in this – and kwaito. From the start we intended to introduce very tight formatting and this has worked exceptionally well. Globally, radio is all about niches but I’m afraid that many South African stations haven’t realised this fully yet. Your music selection is the real bedrock of a station but you have to know your stuff.”
YFM’s tight formatting, however, does not preclude the station from being something of a sonic taste-setter. “It’s a matter of balancing the sounds the listeners are familiar with as well as those you know they’re going to hook into in time.”
Part of Abrahams’s mission at YFM is to ensure the DJs become as musically well-informed as possible. “Our DJs must be able to talk about the music they’re playing. It’s not enough for DJs to ride on the fact that they’re cool simply because they’re on the radio. That element of hip must also come from their knowledge about music and, in the case of YFM, youth-related issues.”
Along with the rest of the YFM team, Abrahams is also casting his eye beyond Gauteng. “I believe there are very real opportunities for a youth station in the other provinces. It would be great to move into Cape Town first and then Durban. There’s a real musical buzz in Cape Town, especially as far as local hip-hop goes, and Durban desperately needs a vehicle to reflect youth culture in that town.”
He’s also a firm believer in the international potential of kwaito. “Not in its current form,” he is quick to point out. “It needs to be broadened and matured and allowed to evolve.”
As I leave, I tell Abrahams about the new Jimi Hendrix BBC Sessions. In a flash, he’s hooked up to a favourite Internet music purchasing site, exclaiming at the fact that the sessions will also be available on vinyl. “Vinyl is the coolest thing,” he says, sounding just like the boy he was when he first discovered this thing called music.