What up Si Sessioners…welcome to another artist spotlight, the space where we give you insight and the downlow on movers and shakers that we think you should keep your eyes and ears on. Our latest spotlighter first hit our ears before he released his album 'blue moon' and since then we have been keeping our curious eye on him, with…not to mention amazement in his work. He's a producer, DJ and remixer…His name? Gift Russell Selomi, who goes by the name “Gift Of Africa”.
About Russell Gift Selomi
Russell is indeed a Gift from what we could hear from his music. He tells us his name “Gift of Africa” derives from that fact…that he is Africa’s Gift. The Aquarius gent is born, bred and currently resides in Bushbuckridge Mpumalanga and being in the beautiful and culturally diverse MP, we had to know what Russell’s favourite food is. He shares that he enjoys himself a good plate of pap and wors.
So what or who has influenced Gift of Africa’s journey from the beginning? What got his passion ignited? He tells us that he grew up in a family of music - “my dad played music all the time, that sinked so deep in me”. His journey officially started when he met Skylitegold in 2012 who introduced him to music production, but recalls his playing habits when he was 5 years old - “I played with oil tins as drums and I'd sing along, I even had a homemade guitar once, made of fishing line and an oil tin and I'd wake up early in the morning and blast out the yard with noise, hahaha”. Even though he’s craft is seasoned now, He acknowledges that he had to be resilient, passionate and dedicated to become the producer that he currently is.
Gift Of Africa's musical heart and mind
He describes himself as a very hard working guy. He’s had to be, given that he’s a self taught music producer. He’s hardworking nature is also evident as he let us in on his daily life of him having a 9 to 5, being a graphic designer and being a free lancer as well. Not only that, he also works on other music genres!
Although he works with other genres, Gift Of Africa is known for deep house, which is how we were also introduced to him. So we needed to know…why deep house? He tells us that deep house has a lot of elements from different genres, and since he grew up liking and listening to a lot of genres it’s easy for him to mix different sounds and create or produce it. He tells us that he’s style is unique, in that he infuses dub, nostalgic and deep all together to produce a song.
So…speaking about producing we’re always curious whether our spotlighters have some sort of routine or special thing that they do before creating the magic. Gift shares that he doesn’t really have a routine – “ I can jump out of the bed and produce right at midnight hahaha”
Everyone has their ups and downs, their highs and lows. So we asked Gift of Africa to share some of his with us. He tells us that he never loses hope, no matter what. This is an amazing trait to have for the sake of ones passion and sanity in our opinion…Perseverance is KEY! He further shares that the worst thing about being in this industry is the criticism “you must always be ready for the negative thoughts”. He shares that he’s also faced the challenge of breaking through and being heard in the industry. But he pulled up his socks and then there was light in his journey, a light that he describes as his biggest highlight; his music being on airplay on Metro FM (one of South Africa's biggest radio stations). He also releases music all around the globe!
So what is Gift’s favourite thing about being in the industry? “The best thing about the music industry is that everyday you learn, it's more like school the learning doesn’t end”.
We all have inspiration that we draw from, whether it be someone or something. So we had to find out where Gift draws his inspiration from. “A lot of people inspire me, I’m also inspired by new sounds like what you hear with Afro House, Afro Tech and now 3 step”. He further mentions that the infusion of sounds to him is creativity and that he doesn’t enjoy listening to the same thing over and over again. We here at the Si Sessions believe that creatives must stay creative.
There’s always something dissatisfying about our place of work, it's not always glitz and glam so we asked Gift is there something he is not satisfied with about where the SA music industry is at the moment. He tells us that he feels like musicians could be more united and that is something about the music industry that he is currently not happy with – “there’s a lot of competition than unity and I would like for us to unite and work better”. We couldn’t have said it better ourselves, unity is always better than competition.
What's the plan for the future?
So what’s up for Gift of Africa for the rest of 2024 and the future? “ 2024 more music coming soon, I’m dropping an Album soon titled Hosanna, under Selebogo Capital Recordings”. You heard it here first ladies and gents, he promises us more good music so make sure you follow his socials for the official drop!
Gift Of Africa signing out
To close off, we asked Gift Of Africa to leave us with a couple of words and he left us with his favourite quote - “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow”. He sends big shout outs to all the musicians out there.