Times Of Swaziland: YFM's Warras rocks at Tinker's

YFM's Warras rocks at Tinker's
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 SINGLELILLY NDWANDWE on 14/02/2011 00:00:00


MBABANE – YFM’s DJ Warras proved to locals why he is one of the most
respected South African deejays when he held the dancefloor to ‘ransom’.
This was during his hour-long set during the Miniskirt Valentine’s Party which
was held at Tinker’s on Friday where the YFM prime time slot hosting deejay
was guest together with deejays Voodoo and Twins On Decks.
Screaming
DJ Warras touched the turntables just after midnight, to turn a lousy dancefloor
into a place everyone suddenly wanted to be. This, the Durban born spinner, was
able to do from his second track of the night right through to the end of his
set. When the deejay first took stage, he got ladies screaming, mainly
appreciating his looks more than the track he opened with.
When he dished out Professor’s ‘Jezebel’, it was the beginning of his
reign.
Even those who had been standing on the sides, watching the dancing from a
distance, started trickling in and in no time the dancefloor began overflowing.
Proved
When the equally greatly celebrated DJ Voodoo took stage at around 1:30am, the
question was whether or not he would be able to keep the crowd – which seemed
a bit too sensitive – on the dancefloor. His opening track proved to be
disappointing as the dancefloor got evacuated like it was on fire, but the
professional spinner switched to hip hop, which he alternated with dancehall and
old skool kwaito, and was able to slowly re-build the dancefloor and keep it
rocking up to the end of his set.
The Twins On Decks then took the turntables, being welcomed by screams from the
ladies. The dancefloor remained stable at first, but slowly built up to
borderline overflowing by the time there was natural light outside, which was
when they got off stage.
…but says Swazi crowd is hard to impress
MBABANE – The local club scene bears significant differences from that of
neighbouring South Africa, thus very challenging to impress.
This is according to three top South African deejays – Warras and Twins On
Decks of YFM - who were playing in the country this past weekend.
During an interview, the top of the house scene deejays - who together call
themselves Triple Threat – appreciated the local crowd response but were quick
to mention that it’s not an easy crowd to impress.
Nervous
According to DJ Warras, real name Warrick Stock, who hosts one of the prime time
shows on South Africa’s top youth radio stations; YFM, playing in Swaziland
can be nerve wracking. "For a very accomplished deejay like me, who gives all on
the decks, Swaziland is still one of the places where I actually get nervous
when I take on the decks. The crowd here is full of surprises and tracks that
normally work in Jo’burg or Cape Town, here they evacuate your dancefloor.
They just never really feel them," Warras said.
The Twins On Decks agreed with the man who taught them how to deejay by
divulging their own observation during their hour-long set on the night: "We
think the differences in response can be broadly explained mainly in terms of
the tempo of the tracks played.
Withdraw
"While in Jo’burg, you can actually get away with playing a series of euro
beats like David Guetta and even faster ones, in Swaziland you just have to
stick to the Kwaito inspired House jams. Like tonight, there are tracks we tried
to sample but quickly had to withdraw and switch to something closer to home –
and those tracks are actually the club hits and crowd pullers in most parts of
SA."
"If you can look back at Voodoo’s set; at the beginning he tried to build up
from the House I was playing but he started losing people and he realised that
soon enough, and that’s perhaps why he jumped onto the genres that hadn’t
been touched yet – Hip Hop and Dancehall. That way he was able to keep people
on their toes, which is one of the important aspects of deejaying," Warras
added.
The deejays went on to hypothesise that the differences in club response could
be because of differences in perception.
"The club scene here is predominantly black, so perhaps the reason why you can
just about get away with upbeat songs but not to the point where you can build
up to playing funk House is that in SA, you also get a sizeable number of whites
in the clubs who’ll have cigarettes stuck to their lips and just moving to the
beat". All the deejays agreed.