East London’s E-man is cleaning up hip-hop
I first saw E-man performing live at the Matthew Mole show a couple of months back and was struck not only by his obvious talent but also by his strong stage presence – he was the evening’s emcee and he did a tremendous job getting the crowd going with his big personality and confident delivery of proceedings.
On this particular evening, E-man thrilled the crowd fronting his talented band through all original music with his hip-hop performance. It was something I had never experienced live before but I thoroughly enjoyed the originality of it – the melodic tunes coupled with a type of rapping that I could actually understand and appreciate was refreshing. I remember thinking to myself at the time, this guy’s going to be big, just wait and see…
E-man, real name Emmanuel Aboagye, was born in Ghana and relocated to South Africa with his family at a young age. He spent the majority of his childhood growing up in Butterworth and then, after a move to East London, he attended George Randell Primary School followed by Stirling High School.
When we recently met in East London, Emmanuel told me that one of the key moments in his life, the catalyst for his future in music, was when his older brother passed away. His brother had been an enormous influence in his life and, after his passing, Emmanuel withdrew somewhat emotionally and this period served to define him musically.
Despite not having studied music at school, it has always been Emmanuel’s passion and his love for rap music led to him covering other artists’ music and then collaborating with a friend from High School. This friendship and the experience of the collaboration and introduction to the world of making music further fuelled Emmanuel’s passion… he had created his own voice and had found a direction he wanted to move in and, after an entrepreneurship course as part of his IT module at Border Tech, Emmanuel realised that he wanted to start his own music business, an ‘engine’ to create music – not just his own but to help others too.
In 2007, independent record label, Dynisty Music, was born. Two organisations that have played a vital role in giving this business a boost is the Arts & Culture Trust (ACT) and IMEXSA (Independent Music Exporters South Africa). The Arts & Culture Trust is South Africa’s premier independent arts funding and development agency, supporting South African creativity all the way and IMEXSA is a NPO dedicated to developing South African-produced music all over the world.
Through Dynisty Music, Emmanuel released his debut EP, The Rookie, in 2011. His first solo offering and although not a huge seller, it was most definitely a landmark for him as an artist and it opened many doors and presented more opportunities…
In 2012, Emmanuel was invited to perform at the SXSW (South by Southwest) Festival in Austin, Texas, an annual international event that has been running for almost 30 years. Countries over the world are represented by different artists at the festival but this was the first time that the Eastern Cape, South Africa had been represented – a huge honour for Emmanuel! This led to him being invited back again this year, just last month in fact, an experience Emmanuel describes as incredibly invaluable.
On home turf, Emmanuel has performed many times as E-man & the Band, and although he has a core group of musicians that make up the band, the members are changeable – this flexibility even led to Emmanuel toying with the name ‘E-man & the Rubber Band’ (personally, I think this name is fabulous!!).
A performance at the Buffalo City Summer Carnival late last year has given Emmanuel the recognition he deserves and, via Dynisty Music, he was responsible for organising Matthew Mole’s performance in East London and the imminent performance from Gangs of Ballet too. He welcomes the idea of working with other artists and mentions a possible collaboration with well-known East London musician Jason Gladwin.
As a Christian man, Emmanuel wants to reach out to people through his music and lyrics. He also feels a sense of responsibility to ‘clean up’ the stereotypical image that hip-hop has worldwide – lyrical content from rappers is sometimes found to be offensive or derogatory but as Emmanuel explains, it really doesn’t have to be that way, it is quite possible to create ‘clean’ hip-hop music.
Busy working on his new EP entitled ‘Soldier. Lover. Poet’, Emmanuel is excited about what the future holds. He will also be performing with his band as the opening act for Gangs of Ballet when they perform in East London later this month.
Exciting times ahead for E-man and we wish him all the very best in his endeavours! Give E-man a listen right here with one of his tracks entitled ‘Believe It or Not’ – he’s seriously good!!