Tamara Dey is without question one of South Africa’s busiest young professional musicians. Having destroyed anything that resembled a cultural divide with the release of her 2001 debut EP, The First Lady, this 23-year-old, Belgian-born Johannesburg resident has been hard at work reinforcing her first wave of success with loads of studio time and now a brand-new album.
“My number-one aim this time round is to celebrate the people who make me sound the way I do,” she offers up in an introduction. “More people need to know that there are truly talented individuals behind the scenes who are often forgotten about once an album hits the shelves. This album will hopefully change all that.”
On this album, entitled The First Lady and the Boys, Dey is giving it up to an often-unsung hero, the producer. Being the perfectionist she is, Dey assembled some of the finest people in the business to work on an album destined to grow local focus and support for the collective powerhouse of players sharing the platform. “It’s something new for everyone,” she admits. “These guys are not used to being photographed for album covers or mentioned in every interview. The really tricky part for me now is not leaving anyone off the list, as they are fast becoming prima donnas,” she jokes.
Having worked on Brothers of Peace’s Project 4 album, she has returned the favour by including maestro producer Bruce Sebitlo from BOP on her new disc, as well as Alexis Faku (Danny K, TK, Joyous Celebration) and Russian producer Bogdan Pashovski. Also added to the mix are up-and-coming South African producer G Mothusi, also known as Jerah; Mandla Spikiri, from the band Trompies; Craig Massiv of Jazzworx fame; and Roger de Sousa and Jean Oosthuizen from Afro South Recordings.
Together with Kevin Manas and Tenyi from High Tech Audio Studios, these names are a rare combination of colour, personality and talent on one album. “Working with so many different personalities and having them work together was quite a challenge for me, and for them too, I would hope,” Dey says.
The first single, So Sweet (Uyazi Mos), is her return to BOP territory, collaborating again as she did on Thati Mpahlakho. The latter track turned Dey in a mainstream pop success, and here, with a touch of kwaito and an infectious house undertow, she looks set to whip up dance floors and the airwaves all over again.
Many fans of her music are still a little befuddled about just who Dey is, if only because of her liberated approach to making music in a truly South African way. “I think people will find that this album defines me and the music I write a little better,” she says. “I have kind of found my feet now. I know many people struggled to pigeonhole my style with the first album — as much I would have preferred them not to — but, yes, there was no definite place, musically speaking, where the songs sat best. A song like What Am I to Do was very different from Deeper, and there was the whole kwaito thing that came in. So I was called a ‘quasi-kwaito’ artist who was into the dance scene with subtle jazz influences. It was all over the place. Now I’ve settled … as much as there is a lot of stuff going on, the common thread is dance, and every track embraces that.
“On the last record I worked with Thandiswa [Bongo Maffin] and Lebo [Mathosa] and kind of used that as the gimmick,” Dey continues. “I had recorded with the top female vocalists in the country at the time and that worked for them as much as it did for me. We all had the opportunity to showcase our independent talent. This time round I focused on a different angle of the music. I have a bit of an obsession with producers. Overseas these guys are as big and as respected as the artists themselves are. For most artists today it’s a very careful balance of great songwriting and who you partner with producer-wise if you intend enjoying a hit single or album.
“South Africa has always suffered from a lack of self-promotion without it being labelled tokenism. We have some fantastic people working with artists and their contribution is only ever recognised on the CD sleeve and never beyond that.
“The end product of any album is as a result of so many things most people aren’t aware of, so I have used this album to push the producers into the spotlight, hence the title,” Dey says proudly. “The boys are the top-dog producers I have hand-picked from different styles of dance music to work with and in so doing celebrate their art as much as my own.”
Never one afraid or too precious to play her music to all of South Africa, corporate or otherwise, Dey seldom turns down an opportunity to perform. The day of the interview she had performed for Transnet executives at 10am on a weekday morning, “literally out in the middle of nowhere”, she laughs in closing. “Flexibility lends itself to opportunity, which in turn allows me to do what I love so much professionally — it’s really that simple.”
With rock, pop and kwaito all hung loosely together under the banner of dance, Dey is undaunted by convention. She is, after all, an individual, and her music represents that as much as her fans applaud her and her role as an emissary of local music’s many faces.