Get to Know Griffith Malo As He Keeps the Fire of House Music Burning
Before the age of amapiano, house and kwaito fed the South African streets. Year-ending songs throughout the times came from either one of the genres, such as “Umlilo” by Big Nuz and Prince Kaybee’s “Club Controlla”, and as such, the sounds have become nostalgic relics, not dead art forms. KwaZulu-Natal DJ and record producer Griffith Malo is one of the many torchbearers of the deep house movement who continues to not only keep the tongue of fire aflame but also stays faithful to the genre despite the shifts in popularity.
With several albums, The Dutch (2015) and Premium Deep House Sounds (2020), to his catalogue and a string of singles, the house deckmaster has been devoted to his journey, working on his craft with diligence and letting the music speak for itself.
Way before Malo became Malo, the soundsmith was a church denizen, who grew up under clerical guidance, an environment which would eventually breed in him the love for music.
Griffith Malo | SUPPLIED
“I come from a church environment, since I was raised by a pastor. So, I was exposed to music in that set up and that’s where I started with the whole music thing, specifically singing in the choir. As for producing music, I started that later on in my life when I got to varsity. I met a couple of people there who introduced me to production, and I developed a huge love for it. All that led to me eventually producing house music,” Malo said.
Griffith recently dropped his latest single, “Uyenza Kanjan”, alongside Darkness Reign. The track explores the theme of messy family politics, particularly sibling spats which evolve into full-blown rivalry, which not only poisons the relationship but also taints the family name in the public eye. Inspired by true life events as experienced by Darkness Reigns, the producer explained how the song came about.
“Darkness Reign is a friend of mine, so I asked him to come through for a session. I didn’t really expect anything to come out of the session, so it was quite surprising when he told me about the situation he was dealing with at home. I wanted him to write about the situation he was going through at the time, so that’s pretty much how the song came about,” he said.
The record producer, at the time of the interview, was holed up in studio, yawning as he spoke, thanks to all the work he’d been putting in leading up to the session. He revealed that he was hard at work in putting together the second installment of his Premium Deep House Sounds series, and that his followers were to expect big names to appear on the LP.
“I’m currently in studio working on my second offering of Premium Deep House Sounds. And I’ve been working with a lot of artists, like Russell Zuma, Oscar Mbo, and Sbani the Vocalist, so there have been lots of collaborations that I’ll be putting on that record,” he said.
Griffith Malo | SUPPLIED
As the old saying goes: “Bad company corrupts good character.” Griffith Malo explained how important it was for him to keep his musical ecosystem clean and populated only by people who would grow him.
“I like to keep myself in a healthy space and environment. It helps with the whole creative process along with having positive people and people you look up to around you, who keep you grounded and help you to stay focused. Those things help with tackling tasks at hand and keep me growing,” he said.
Malo singled out his 2020 song “Save Us” as his most prized craftsmanship, a cut extrapolated from Premium Deep House Sounds.
“To me, “Save Us” is a very special song because it broke me into the industry as a solo artist. It opened doors for me – and continues to do so to this day. That’s the one song I cherish the most,” he said.
Listen to “Save Us”:
While Griffith was noncommittal with his response as far as crossing over to other genres was concerned, he still admitted that he was messing around with test tubes in studio and working with the experts in those fields to develop new sounds along the way.
“I’ve been experimenting with a lot of other genres, such as amapiano and deep tech. Plus, I’ve been doing a lot of collaborations with people in those spaces. There’s actually this track I worked on recently with Kabza De Small and Oscar Mbo, and it was nice to have that soulful amapiano sound with South African flavour infused into deep house music,” he said.