Cape Town – When South Africa first went into a Covid-19 national lockdown last year, which initially shut down most business and social activity, most people soon started following popular trends such as baking banana loaves and exercising to keep themselves sane.
Three young men from Atlantis took it a notch higher, embarking on a venture that could yield significant financial gain.
From the garage of their Robinvale home, Chad Scott, 24, his 19-year-old brother Joshua and their best friend, Denzel Paulsen, 26, launched a record label which they called GMF Records.
“We have all been involved in our own aspect of music. Me, I was a DJ, Joshua has always been into producing and Denzel rapping,” Chad Scott, who is the manager, said in an interview with the African News Agency (ANA).
“We never really thought about taking it a step further and going professional. Once lockdown started, we did some promotional videos. We started recording videos for social media using our cellphones; all the editing we did by ourselves and we started getting attention.”
Soon, the three decided to see how far they could take this and, using the Scott garage as a studio, bought their own equipment and started making music.
“We also have an events brand called The Get Down, which we use to host live shows and fund-raisers for our company. The last event took place on December 6 in Atlantis, which was a great success,” the older Scott told ANA.
The trio also has their own clothing line, which has become popular among the youth in Atlantis. Their seamstress, the Scotts’ grandmother, makes the items from the garage.
The community has been very supportive, not only with the music but also the clothes and live events.
On Friday, GMF Records is set to release an EP (extended play record) with nine music tracks.
“We’ve been working on the You Saw, I Said project for over six months now. We decided on this name based on the content of this project,“ said Scott.
“Denzel, in many of the tracks on this EP, talks about things in and around our community (and others) that are seen on a daily basis, but are hardly ever addressed or spoken about. In many of his verses he offers fragments of advice to the youth, using his personal life experience as reference.”
On this album, GMF Records collaborated with outside producers Justin Govender from Grassy Park and Imraan Bedford from Athlone.
“We’re already working on our next project. It feels like yesterday when we started this. I guess it just shows how busy we are every day,” says Scott, adding that the biggest satisfaction for all their hard work is seeing how people appreciate the events and music as well as realising just how much they have grown.
The next projects will include doing two or three videos from the EP which Joshua Scott is already working on.
After Friday’s launch, the EP will go live on digital platforms such as Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube on March 12.
“We poured our hearts into this project and it really is something Atlantis can be proud of,” Chad Scott said.
African News Agency (ANA)