Boiler Room and Ballantine’s True Music headed to SA for three incredible parties

Boiler Room and Ballantine’s Scotch Whisky announced South Africa as the next stop on its 2019 True Music tour which will touch down in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town from 19 September for three amazing showcases.

Promising to take a stand for true music, the project is part of Ballantine’s commitment to push True Music scenes forward and support artists, fans, crews and communities around the world, by spotlighting the home-grown talent redefining their local scenes.

“South Africa has proven to be a huge success for the Boiler Room and Ballantine’s shows with some of the world’s richest music history and forward-thinking sounds. This year’s Spring tour shows the breadth of what is happening musically across the country, from big bold experimental live performances by some of the best female acts coming out of Joburg right through to the next wave of gqom and hip-hop in Durban and Cape Town respectively,” said Boiler Room founder and CEO, Blaise Bellville.

The first stop on the multi-city tour is Johannesburg. On 19 September, Boiler Room and Ballantine’s True Music will bring together a line-up of artists creating the future sounds of South Africa within the alternative, experimental and LGBTQ+ communities; these are the artists redefining and reinterpreting the established sounds of kwaito, gqom, Afropop, hip-hop and house. Performing live on the night are Sho Madjozi, Busiswa, Stiff Pap, Queezy, Doowap, and Lelowhatsgood.

For the first time, on 27 September Boiler Room and Ballantine’s True Music will head to Durban for the ultimate gqom line-up. This limited capacity show will be headlined and hosted by pioneer DJ Lag, and his hometown event Something for Clermont. DJ Lag’s Something For Clermont, taking place in his hometown, features a handpicked line-up of gqom stalwarts and those he recognises as the future generation of the genre. The line-up will be announced early September.

On 23 October Boiler Room and Ballantine’s True Music will host the third and final instalment of the South Africa tour in Cape Town, celebrating a city that prides itself on an eclectic musical landscape with diverse experimentation of underground hip-hop, kwaito and electronic music.

This unrivalled line-up of the city’s emerging hip-hop and rap artists is not to be missed. Hosted by Crayons, one of the most talked-about streetwear brands and party promoters in the underground scene, the line-up features the artists leading a new era of the city’s hip-hop scene.

Boiler Room and Ballantine’s aim to tell the stories of these boundary-breaking music communities and the opportunities they are carving for themselves to the wider world. Following the tour, the True Music project will continue to support these scenes through a soon-to-be-announced initiative created in collaboration with one of the communities the tour has visited.

 “We are so excited to be heading back to South Africa with Boiler Room. The diverse and dynamic music scenes in this country continue to surprise us as they don’t stop evolving and always deliver something new. We’ve spent a lot of time in Johannesburg and Cape Town in recent years but have learned no two visits are ever the same, so to be heading back and adding Durban to the mix, somewhere completely new for our partnership, is amazing,” Ballantine’s head of music, Tom Elton, said.