On Moss & Music
Cape Town’s newest live music event
Cape Town is too small, we all know this. Although I’ve found that the more involved we get in the cultural scene, the smaller Cape Town gets.
Mid-last month my friend Alex Biaya posted on Instagram about a performance on the 29th of May. The event was new to me, and being the journalist that I am, I decided to do a bit of digging.
Imagine my surprise when I found out that half of the duo behind Moss Media was my roommate’s girlfriend, Jess Myhill. My job has never been easier.
When I ran into Jess again, we got to chatting, and when I realised how similar our interests were, I set up an interview with her and her business partner, Sihle Mkosi, to learn more about their new endeavour, Moss & Music.
So tell me about Moss Media? How did you two decide to embark on this journey?
Sihle: So Jess and I are actually family friends that go way back - our mothers attended varsity together. We actually only met when we were young teenagers. When we first met Jess had this DSLR camera which I thought was so cool, I knew nothing about cameras at the time.
Fast forward to varsity days, Jess went and studied film at the New York Film academy and got the technical side of what we do down. I studied electronic engineering, but it didn't work out - in my fourth year I decided this wasn’t it. 2020 and COVID happened and that made me decide to pursue what I’m actually interested in. For me when I left matric my family gifted me a camera. Watching a lot of Americans and European people do this as a job and land brand deals to make real money kinda showed me that there was potential for this. I moved down to Cape Town in 2020 and my cousin, who is a music producer, and I started a little agency and started doing things. Jess and I connected and we would ask Jess to edit some videos and stuff for us.
Fast forward a couple years to the end of 2022 when Jess and I met up for coffee - at the time I was in a consultancy gig and I really wanted to get back to the media thing, and Jess was working a job in which she was frustrated. We figured let's go into 2023 and launch our agency, which is Moss Media.
Sihle Mkosi, photographed by Jess
Jess: When Sihle and I met up for coffee just before he arrived in Cape Town, I happened to run into Mateo Moleko, who is a frequent collaborator of Jeremy Loops - except I didn't clock it at the time. We ended up having a chat and the topic of my work came up. I didn’t think much of it at the time but he messaged me later and then I realised who he was. He was looking for someone to take over Jeremy Loops social media which he had been running for 10 years.
At that point I didn't think I wanted to do it alone, and because we were already talking about working together I figured “let's not sell myself as a video editor, let’s sell us as a team”. It’s been a really fruitful thing for both us and them because we complement each other really well. Sihle has done a lot of the brand management and social media management, while I handle the content creation and editing. We’ve become quite the dynamic duo I would say in terms of servicing a big brand like Jeremy across a lot of needs, while outsourcing to other creatives if we need.
Jess Myhill
Sihle: That’s become a lot of the work, finding different people to do the different things. With a brand like Jeremy’s we need to post regularly on socials to keep his audience engaged, but occasionally we need to shoot a music video, or we need to learn how to release a song - last year for Feathers and Stone we had to handle the whole rollout campaign for his fourth album. For labels nowadays social media has become the main way to market new music. That’s exactly why Jeremy wanted his own team, to make sure that the content is aligned to Jeremy’s voice and what his audience resonates with.
We came from the perspective of social media and how to play that game, but we’ve had to do so much more for Jeremy’s brand which is marketing on a broader scale. After a year and a half with Jeremy we’ve learnt so much about the industry, about music, and what to do to push a song. Which is why we’ve positioned Moss Media as focused on promoting musicians and people in the entertainment industry.
With Thando Skwatsha, we met through my cousin who was producing for him a few years back before Thando left to go study at New York Film Academy as well. Now that he’s back and pushing his music, we're trying to help and guide him in his career.
Thando Skwatsha, performing at Moss & Music // photographed by @vanlord
Is that the nexus between how you started and Moss & Music?
Jess: I guess Moss & Music is us realising how we were supporting brands like Jeremy and one or two other clients that came about, and realising in our strategy how our brand lives within Cape Town and the scene - we wanted it to feel different. We’re so behind our desks a lot of the time and supporting artists from that perspective, but we’ve been learning a lot as well about events and the industry.
Sihle: We got first hand experience on how to put on a large scale with events via Jeremy and the side of the industry he is a part of. We witnessed that if you get signed to a major label you get all these big opportunities, but if you can't get signed, how do you get these opportunities? Where are the shows? Who’s doing the advertising for these shows?
So we figured we could do it. We could go out there, put on shows, get the small artists, secure the small venues, and just run it. Because not enough people are taking the initiative. Not enough people are like you guys that have started your own publication. It aligns perfectly with our own advertising strategy of getting into the industry and networking with artists who will go on to need media one day, while still helping them out.
We’re trying to position ourselves as a digital brand that can help those artists to position themselves for the betterment of their own career.
Image courtesy of Moss Media
Jess: I’ve been living in Cape Town for 7-8 years now and I didn’t know anyone when I arrived. I happened to connect with an old friend who is a drummer, and I feel very lucky that I was exposed to the jazz and music scene and was able to witness these intimate shows over the past years. But I didn’t quite know how to fully translate the feeling of going to live events like these and witnessing these moments of magic, but on such a small intimate scale.
It’s so rich and beautiful to be able to have been an audience member and actively been a part of these events for the past couple of years. If there’s even a sliver of that which we can capture to be able to broadcast, that’s media that can live on in the Internet and can be shared.
Sihle: A big part of what we’re on a mission to achieve as well. With our love for film and seeing the examples of that from other parts of the world like Tiny Desk, Mahogany Sessions, COLORS Show, all these really cool properties that have become a platform for artists - hopefully one day the Moss & Music property can get to that level.
To keep these events happening is a means to make it sustainable, but at its core is a way to showcase the artists and instead of just seeing them play to 60 people, give them the opportunity to play to 60 000. It doesn't happen unless people like us put the effort in.
Image courtesy of Moss Media
So going into the first iteration of Moss & Music, what can we expect?
Sihle: It's going to be a cozy intimate experience, with great soulful music. We’re going to film it and that will be the start of the music property that we’re hoping to launch. Building the platform is really what we’re hoping to do. The goal is definitely to do more of these.
Jess: And building a culture around it.
Sihle: Yeah, much like what you guys are doing, we aspire to be a hub for artists to come to - to be able to reach out and say ‘I want to be part of this’ and we’ll find a way to build something around their genre and style. This first one is very RnB focused, but the next one could be Hip Hop, the next one could be Jazz. We’ve realised that if you know the right people, you can make anything happen.
Jess: Also just setting out to do something is a big part of it. Sihle lives in Pretoria, so for this one we just set a date and said that’s when the event is going to happen. Saying that we’re going to do it instead of waiting for things to align has been a really big change for us.
Sihle: Just telling yourself to do it is the thing. We booked the 29th of May almost two and a half months ago and just decided that we’re going to do this.
I feel that. Personally I’m a big believer in momentum - just stepping out and taking that first step on a journey, that’s when the second step will reveal itself. VERVE has proven that, every time we decide to step back and not overreach in something that we wanted to do, someone comes knocking on our door wanting to do it with us.
Jess: It’s a very powerful thing to do, to say to yourself that even if you don't feel ready, that you have enough experience to start something.
Sihle: And just being open to learning. We’re going to make mistakes, we’re going to drop some balls, but we’ll see them bounce and pick them up again.
Photographed by @_oge.c
For the last question, what is your opinion of the cultural landscape of the city, and where do you see it going from here?
Jess: There are a lot of underground things, things you find in small pockets, and when you do find them it's like finding a pocket of gold. But it’s so hard to access them without knowing someone who knows of it. I think that landscape is so precious to fall upon, but it does not allow as many people to access it. So I think platforms like VERVE are great, because we need more hubs. We need places to go to to learn about all the artists in Cape Town.
I don’t know that there are enough hubs like that, and I think there should be more. And we all continue to pour into that, there’s a lot to discover in the city.
Sihle: Definitely. Just to echo that sentiment, there aren’t enough platforms for all the different kinds of cultural things that are going on. Platforms like Let’s Get Local, there should be more like that which is focused on the different sectors of the scene. If you just search ‘Jazz in Cape Town’ a platform should pop up to provide access to the culture. To the point that it’s all underground, it’s not on the surface, but there’s still a point of access. Because all you see online are these large scale festivals.
We just need more. More platforms, more events, more coverage.
100%. I’d say the dream behind what we’re doing is to build a healthier ecosystem for the artists, and to kind of change the nature of the industry from just certain people having the power.
Sihle: That’s why for us it’s not just about one genre of music, or one group of artists from some place. Anyone who has talent and can perform, we want to capture it and develop a really cool piece of media around it, and publish it. The more we can do of that the better. We don't have to only do Moss & Music events, we can film any event but with that intention behind it.
Alex Biaya // Image courtesy of Moss Media
Walking into the stunning Glenhof Manor on a rainy Thursday set the perfect ambience for what turned out to be a picturesque evening.
The HiRollers warmed up the crowd as Alex Biaya sauntered on to the stage, and worked his magic on the crowd. Watching him perform with the HiRollers for the second time now, I was yet again blown away at how they transformed Alex’s set into something new - somehow it felt different even from the last time I saw them perform. Alex was in his element, doing what he loved, and he pulled the crowd in with his energy to ensure that they were loving it too - even setting up a harmony with the two halves of the crowd to close out his set.
As a headliner Thando Skwatsha was a new act to me, but I bore witness to what the crowd clearly already knew. He brought us in with his smooth vocals, performing everything from his original work, to covers of amaPiano jams, and even igwijo, managing to get the crowd on their feet - his energy almost carrying some of us onto the stage with him.
At Moss & Music I was fully immersed in what Jess described as a ‘pocket of gold’, and even after a year, the magic of the moment is not yet lost on me.
VERVE exists to find these pockets and spread the word about them, and it’s encouraging to see that we are not the only ones out there. The scene is growing, slowly but surely, and we hope that everyone approaches it with the same authenticity and passion as Moss Media does - as we do.
As always, the people we meet and the spaces we enter inspire us to keep going. We only hope that we can inspire others in the same way.
Keep an eye on Moss Media for their next Moss & Music event - we’re definitely excited to see what else they have in store
