Existing in a space of antitheses - An article by Emily Freedman

I have known Conor Hugo for several years, during which time their sustained presence all over the scene, their depth of knowledge, and their profound love for music have remained constant. Central to Conor’s practice is a political and aesthetic commitment to holding tension. Their work draws on a distinctly Queer sensibility that values multiplicity, fragmentation, and improvisation over closure. This orientation resists normative demands for stability, and gives rise to a dissonance that is productive. This dissonance- I feel- comes out strongly in the- almost improvisational- interview text itself.

Tell me a bit about yourself and what your experience has been with music and the general music scene in Cape Town.

“I do a bunch of different stuff on the scene. I'm a producer, a sound recorder and a DJ. I’m also a gig organiser and an agent.”

“I started playing grunge music with my friends in school. Then I met Benji Anstey and Adam Selikowitz through a mutual friend and they introduced me to South African jazz and I just fell in love. I identify with it a lot as a Queer person.”

“So I played with Benji and Adam and carried on with Jazz- not through studying but just playing with people. I got the opportunities to play with Umuthiomkhulu and Johnny Wolf in 2024.”

“I also study sound engineering at Cape Audio College. This is my fourth year. It's been helpful in that it’s definitely strengthened my taste and that’s like my thing, I rely on my taste even more than technical skill. I sort of feel like my taste informs my technicality.”

Tell me more about how SA Jazz resonates with your Queerness

“I feel like it's kind of a strange thing to say as a white South African, but that left-field nature of that expression, you know, I identify with that a lot as a Queer person. I’m influenced by alt and Jazz and they bleed into each other for me.”

From what you’re saying, it sounds like there’s almost something inherently Queer about Jazz?

“It’s the counterculture nature. Jazz, Punk. Also hiphop and Jungle- they’re heavily sample-based so they directly pull from sounds that existed in the past, not in a regressive way but using it as a vehicle. You nod to tradition.”

“It's like there's a level of entry, a level of gatekeeping that isn't unhealthy but feels like a litmus test that proves you're not there to exploit the culture”

“It’s that signal, which is also quite Queer-coded.”

Can you tell me more about your experience with the Punk genre?

“I identified with the aesthetics of punk quite a lot but- I think also this can be said for jazz- Punk has a tendency to fall into like skinheads, you know, they're using this tradition of left-wing ideology and twisting it into a fascist thing.”

“For example, Sex Pistols, they wore swastikas, they thought it was against their parents and cool.”

“So it's like a misuse of the virtue signal.”

Do you see any issues here, in the local scene?

“Yeah, of course, there's a lot of men on the jazz scene.”

“There's a bit of cognitive dissonance for me when I'm watching gigs and talk to these guys afterwards and they’re misogynist and very boisterous.”

“I've also been going to the Jazz festival in Makhanda for the past couple of years, and the first year I was enthralled by all these amazing artists in one place and you know having that moment of like: they're also human and they're just being themselves, but then, talking to them outside of the gig, you see a side to them that you wouldn't necessarily hear on their albums.”

“And then when you do see that side of the artists you hear it on the album.”

“There’s also just gigs that happen where these guys are shredding Bebop and there's a lot of machismo- just flexing their chops, which for me is just not what it's about.”

How do you feel the scene can respond to the misogyny?

“Gatekeepers need to be doing their job better but also those moments are coming from an entrenched system. There needs to be accountability. I even struggle to call it out in the moment sometimes but ultimately we all need to feel responsible.”

How did you get involved with the Obscene Parrot?

“My step dad owns the place. Although before that, I was here playing gigs. I was living in Obs and this whole corner of Milton and Lower Main was where I spent all my time. I got to know people and fell into organising. I saw the gigs at some other venues were fucking over the artists, just not doing the work for the artists. Obviously it's a symbiotic relationship but I believe the venue should pick up the slack.”

What would you say is the aim and ethos of the Parrot as a music venue/ community space?

“I can't speak for the whole of the Parrot, I'm speaking from my experience interacting with this place as a venue. It's a bar slash venue with this back-space, where the music happens, that functions like a whole separate thing.”

“There's this concept of a Queer portal. All the queer safe spaces that I have interacted with in Cape Town have this portal aspect.”

“For example, Evol: you go through the stag's head which is just like a prime symbolic example of capitalism and there's like gambling machines and there's like regulars that come there all the time and are sort of stuck in this cycle of like alcoholism and then you go through to the upstairs section and it's like a queer utopia.”

“That's what I'm trying to do here. It's always been a Queer safe space.There's the flag out front, and it's historically been a place where lots of trans people have hung out for games nights and movie nights.”

“I try to platform a lot of artists who wouldn't necessarily have a platform otherwise because a lot of the venues in Cape Town have zero respect for even established artists but especially artists who are up and coming.”

How do you go about curating a space that feels genuinely supportive to emerging artists?

“I think it's just acknowledging that they hold all of the power. It starts with them and ends with them. They also get all of the entry fee, unless it's a really big gig, then I’ll take 10% for living purposes, but even then I feel really bad.”

Do you think building a space for music is a political act?

“Oh yeah, 100%. I think a lot of the venues view themselves as existing in a vacuum. Similarly, a lot of the big names on the scene are really good musicians but they’re acting in a vacuum- the music doesn't have a past, so they’re pulling from musical tradition while ignoring the political tradition.”

“Also, in terms of the jazz scene, because of its close proximity to academia, It's ironically a lot harder to activate these leftist ideas because regressive ideas are so rooted in the academic space. So many people who are in the scene are coming from a formal training and the training is often rooted in institutions which are rooted in colonial legacies.”

In terms of running a space, how do you handle monetization as a concept?

“There’s a cognitive dissonance in it. It’s a tension between wanting to protect the space's values and wanting economic opportunity to be available, including to yourself. It's messy and contradictory to think about who ‘deserves’ to make money in a space you run — especially when you're also participating in that economy.”

“Also, when I run gigs it feels very healthy but also exists in a space that’s just like a bar that's making money, it’s a capitalist institution. It is hard to balance those two things.”

So you just think one just has to traverse that tension by being conscious of it?

“Yeah, especially if a lot of the people that are owning the spaces are old men and very stubborn and very hard to get through to. It’s very hard to show older people that the stuff that I'm talking about does have an end goal and it's not against you even though it feels like it's against you.”

“I'm a big proponent of the thought that the foundation cannot be rotten for you to build something prosperous. However, all of the foundations are rotten so you have to sort of work somewhere. I just try to operate heterotopically- I know its not attainable but its the place to work towards.”

Do you think performing music can still be radical when it's intertwined with industry structures?

“I think there are studios that deal with it really well that are more indie, independent labels. They deal with artist interaction really well but with big labels, I think it’s impossible.

As an individual, I have no choice right now. I know the power is in the wrong place, but I have to be optimistic because if I'm pessimistic, I'll just spiral. You have to be optimistic about things. Again, work heterotopically.”

So in your position, how do you do it differently?

“I let the artist know that they have the power- in action. It goes further than just telling them they have power. When you're on stage playing you feel like you're doing something important then it's a kick in the ass when you don't get the proceeds you deserve from it. I also form a relationship with the artist and maintain healthy communication all the way through.”

What have you learned about the behind-the-scenes labor that keeps a scene going?

“I think it's a lot more straightforward than people think it is: I message a person and I'm like I like you, I want to play here. I'm just in the background to a large extent which I like. I like having a sense of control because I'm quite confident in my taste. It’s also been very good for me just to learn how to talk to people, you know! I also just get to know the person before platforming them to make sure that I know they won’t harm anyone in the space”

“And if we go into the identity politics of it all, there's always upsides and downsides to a person's identity. At the end of the day I am a white person, you know, platforming jazz. And then also I'm a South African platforming jazz. It's hard consolidating my whiteness with my nationality. And then as a Queer person- I feel like all of the music I enjoy goes back to queerness. Punk and Jazz are both inherently Queer. People forget that the origins of rock and roll go back to Black women.”

“At the end of the day it all comes down to communication- all of the genres that I like communicate in some way. In punk it's a more forefront political communication sonically and lyrically- it's more obvious, its loudness, for example. In Jazz, harmonically, it's revolutionary, it's in the dissonance, that tonal dissonance. Jungle and hip hop, sampling artforms, feel very political to me- taking sound that has existed at a point in time, as opposed to Drum and Bass where the sounds are made, not taken.”

“Sampling is almost a kind of theft that I like! It's something jazz musicians do all the time: standards exist- the blues is an old Jazz form and whenever you're doing a blues you're taking a form that has existed for almost the entire century, and giving something new to it.”

What strikes me is that often revolutionary or leftist rhetoric- it’s even in the word “progressive”- is very forward-looking, and a rejection of tradition but I think this is such a unique strain of counter-culture because the lineage is the source of radicalism.

“Yeah. That's where all the information exists. In a sense, there's no new ideas. I'm simultaneously unoriginal and original.”

“I think leaning into that dissonance is important, and not straying away from that dissonance, you know. Like, simultaneous, stretching out instead of going forward or back, like going both ways at once.”

“There's this manifesto that I read called the Crystalist Manifesto. It talks about consciousness as a crystal, reflecting: the energy goes in and then it gets reflected but the energy isn't lost, the energy is still there. In that sense, taking from tradition and splintering in different directions, this simultaneous push and pull. And, that exists in the rhythms of jazz- swing is a simultaneous push and pull.”

“That’s why I like J DIlla. What Dilla does is he takes swing and extends the push and pull even further-simultaneously stretching it out and zoning in on tiny rhythms that no one would do in traditional hip hop.”

This is a good departure point to talk more about your relationship with music production. How did you get into DJing?

“I did sound engineering because I was curious about behind-the-scenes stuff, and as a way to make money. I inherited a bunch of late 90s House from my dad and I sifted through that. Then I went gravedigging for music that I wanted to hear on the scene.”

Do you approach DJing as a form of storytelling? Is it curating? Is it experimentation?

“For me, it's all very improvisational, and that’s significant. For instance, when you play a jazz gig with a band that you've never played with before, and they just give you the music, and then you just play it, and then you're all just communicating and improvising together.”

“So when it's DJing and it's just me, it feels like I'm communicating with how the art form has existed- like there's people immortalised in this wax disk and I'm in dialogue with them and in that space I just zone out.”

“Sometimes when I zone out in social interactions it's very unhealthy but when i'm DJing and I zone out it feels like I'm doing something good.”

Who are your main influences?

“Carlo Mombelli. Although he's an academic- he's the head of jazz at Wits- he still isn't stuck in tradition. He’s got this album called ‘Theory’. It's just interesting, and very experimental. And J Dilla as a producer has been influential to my listening ear.”

Do you think your tastes are shaped more by what's going on internationally or locally?

“Not to homogenise genre, but I feel like there's elements of Jazz in everything, it's at the centre of it all. The rhythms in hip hop come from Jazz. So much sampling comes from Jazz recordings and so many rhythms come from the traditions: they exist in hip hop from swing, jungle is just sped up funk beats. Again, immortalising but changing. It feels very healthy”

What are your methods for digging for new music?

“At the moment it's just records. I find it quite liberating to create music that doesn't exist anywhere else.”

“Also, with Jazz, you can just look at people that play on an album and then see if there’s an album that they have made in other bands.”

“So, it's just looking at people who play on people's stuff and listening to their stuff and then going to look at people who play on their stuff and listening to their stuff.”

What are your thoughts on genre as a concept?

“If you claim you have no genre you are disrespecting tradition, but the leftist in me is also like: ‘I don't want to be part of any system that existed before me’. So again it's a line you have to tread.”

“You also have to be weary of disingenuous actors who quote from tradition, almost going as far as being plagiaristic. For example, Sister Rosetta Tharpe. She’s a gospel musician and essentially invented rock and roll, and her significance is so often under-acknowledged.”

Do you think certain genres carry specific ideological, or cultural weight?.

“Yeah, every genre has weight.”

Why do we tend to see some genres as more politically inclined than others?

“I think at some point in every genre's history there has been radicalism. For example, people wouldn’t usually see classical music as radical but then the further you go on, maybe as it goes into Russian classical music, for example, these musicians lived in the Soviet Union where all the music was state controlled.”

“So then there's composers like Rachmaninoff who used dissonance as a tool to be political. Similarly, in Brazilian music, in Bossa Nova, on the surface, it's like: oh, we're having a fun time, we're like at the beach. Yeah, like a pretty girl walking by, but in the harmony it's like there's political unrest going on.”

“People probably tend to associate Jazz with politics more because Jazz was born out of blues which was born out of slavery- it's on the nose inherently political. Figures in the jazz world were inherently political and it's a newer genre that has grown by responding to various world-changing events more recently, relatively.”

What is your opinion of the Cape Town creative scene at the moment- would you like to see it change in any ways?

“I think there's a lot of appeal to authority in the sense that all the big events are like: ‘Oh, we're bringing in an international artist’. I sort of hate that as a pull to come to an event. A lot of the most popular electronic music in the world is South African, like Amapiano. It comes from here so why do we need to keep looking outwards. And also, at the end of the day just pay the artists that are from here. Why can't we pay a local artist the same amount that we're paying an international artist?”

Music- sitting within systems like commerciality and academia,

spaces like underground venues and reclaimed sites,

genres that inform traditions to be constantly invoked and departed from,

and, music, itself, as a sound system speaking politics-

exists in a space of antitheses.

To produce sound and build a scene, Hugo ultimately suggests that rather than resolving dissonance, one needs to stretch across it.

Conor Hugo- Sound Producer, Scene Builder

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