Mattafix’s debut album is called Signs of a Struggle, which is apt. Singer Marlon Roudette’s voice is world-weary and his lyrics reflect all kinds of struggle, whether personal, political or sociological. On Thursday afternoon outside Newtown music venue the Bassline — the day before the duo are set to play in the huge, temporary dome that currently looms over Jozi’s cultural hub — Roudette and producer Preetesh Hirji seem very laid-back to have produced music so steeped in struggle.
And while it’s a cliché to go on about how down to earth one’s interviewees are, I can’t escape the feeling that I’m sitting down with a couple of friends having a chat. Signs of a Struggle went platinum, and these two have not yet sniffed their weight in cocaine and started acting unapproachably. Since this is exactly how plenty of acts behave (yes, I’m looking at you, Audio Bullies), I was relieved to find I could relate to Mattafix — just like I can relate to their music.
On Mattafix’s more personal songs, one feels like one is eavesdropping on a very private conversation. This prompted me to ask if there was a relationship at some stage that went horribly wrong.
“There were a few,” says Marlon. “You have to have to have experienced a lot of shit to be able to sing about anything relevant, so on the album there are family feuds, romances that ended in a world of pain, all of that. This is very personal stuff, but at the same time it’s stuff that many people have experienced, so people can relate to it. If they couldn’t, what would be the point?”
I mention that what makes their music interesting for me is the combination of slamming beats and bass with old-school songwriting. “That’s because of our musical history,” says Hirji. “We both had rich musical upbringings and we learned to appreciate songs — well-written, well-structured self-contained songs.
“Songwriting traditions are important to us and that’s reflected on the album. Of course we also love beats and baselines,” he adds, which is par for the course since he spends a great deal of time making both. We’re part of that generation, but at the same time we appreciate song structure, so it’s those two very different elements we’ve tried to bring together in our music.”
Turning to the social commentary in Mattafix’s lyrics, I ask about Gangster Blues, a song I thought was a harsh criticism on the cool criminal lifestyle. Roudette sets me straight. “We aren’t necessarily critical. We wrote Gangster Blues for a friend of ours who we saw getting mixed up in drug dealing and going in a direction that we didn’t feel was right for him, but the press have made it out to be this preachy statement condemning all gangsters, which it isn’t. It was more of a personal statement about a specific friend of ours.
“Pree was brought up in a bad-ass area of London, I was brought up in the West Indies, and we grew up with people who were living on the wrong side of the law, and I’d never denounce anyone for choosing a certain path due to their personal circumstances.”
Mattafix’s lyrics aren’t limited to the personal, and the struggle mentioned in the album title is also a global political one. But in this day and age, does protest music still have a place? Are we not too cynical to believe this still? Hirji doesn’t think so.
“I think music can change the world; Bob Geldof proved that with Live Aid. But it’s not just about famous people grandstanding. What’s important is that everyone gets involved in their own capacity. Positive action is the only thing that can bring about change.”
What about those who think that music shouldn’t centre on the political?
“We don’t knock people who don’t wanna do it, who keep politics out of their lyrics because that’s not what they’re into,” says Roudette. “If you don’t feel like it’s your place to say something, that’s cool, but at the same time never knock the people who do say these things because historically music has always been a vessel for freedom of speech.
“In a dictatorship you’ll find the artists and the musicians will be the first to get locked away because they are free-thinking. You work in a newspaper. The original newspaper was the song. And that essence of music reflecting reality shouldn’t be lost.”
By now Roudette is passionately engaged, enough to share his own personal politics with me. “Fundamentally, sustainable development is the key,” he says. “There were indigenous people of each continent who had it right, who only killed what they needed to eat, who respected the land; it was a pretty resourceful existence, and that culture has been methodically stamped out, through genocide, like what happened with the Native Americans and Australian aborigines and the Tainos in the Caribbean.
“We have to come full circle now and realise that that way of living was renewable and sustainable and viable. I’m not saying we should knock down the buildings and go around in loin cloths again, but there is something to be learned from the past regarding the next step we need to take, which involves renewable energy. We’re in a race. Either we evolve spiritually and emotionally as people, or we kill the planet and ourselves. The outcome is still in the balance.”
“It’s vital,” continues Hirji, “the concept of societies building a sustainable infrastructure around things like agriculture and education — and through globalisation we’ve lost touch with that.”
Ah, globalisation. We are meant to loathe it but at the same time we’re all pretty tied into it. Take the Mattafix tour. Two Londoners, one of West Indian descent, the other of Indian descent, being interviewed by a Jewish South African of distant Eastern European lineage outside the Bassline, where school kids from Soweto wearing Nike tracksuits play in a field surrounded by ubiquitous Coca-Cola signs.
“You can’t really escape globalisation, though,” I volunteer. “Of course you can’t,” says Preetesh, “we’re products of it. And a lot of beauty has come from it. It’s a double-edged sword and we have to be aware of the negative side of it. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything positive that could come from it.”
Like Mattafix coming to South Africa, for instance.
Mattafix perform in the Marquee at Mary Fitzgerald Square, Newtown, Johannesburg, with a full band on September 8