Born Bubele Booi in Cape Town but raised in the City of Gold, Grammy-nominated producer Vumaala has had a fine run behind the scenes, setting up the sounds of his colleagues while remaining an unsung mastermind behind the compositions. The musician recently fully transitioned into the role of being a lead artist, stepping into the forefront of his music and reimagining the ceiling of his creativity.
Vumaala took things back to his childhood, where it all began with watching his father play music, a man he fondly described as the first rockstar he’d ever known.
“The series of events that brought me to music was witnessing my dad. He’d play the guitar and piano during family prayer time. He was the first rockstar I ever knew, and seeing him do that was my genesis when it comes to music. He taught me the basics he knew, and not before long I started asking for piano lessons, but in school they typically didn’t offer piano lessons for children below a certain age. But after much begging, the teacher took me in, and there I was learning the piano at Grade 2,” Booi said.
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Vumaala released “Can’t Get Enough,” a high-octane anthem alongside Bipolar Sunshine. In a world where art is a thing of rewrites and revisions of recorded versions of a song, Booi talked about the facile process behind the making of the song, with the fortuitous link-up between him and Sunshine resulting in a seamless one-two that gave birth to the song in almost a day.
“Bipolar is a legend—such a nice guy. Our publisher actually linked us up and thought we’d work well together, and when we did, we felt there was a lot of good energy between us. With this song, once we’d gotten the chords right, the chorus came to us, and we knew that it was the core of the song, and we were just bouncing around the room laughing. It became the simplest thing that was on Bipolar’s heart that could tie together with the energy of the chorus. He came up with some lyrics for the verses and then put them together. It was me, Bipolar, and David Balshaw writing this song in some room in Los Angeles, and we had a lot of fun doing it,” he said.
Check out “Can’t Get Enough”:
Booi spoke about releasing music consistently to keep the buzz around his music strong.
“We are planning on dropping a collection of songs. I myself have been dropping a song a month since the start of the year. I want to keep doing that. The next phase, which I consider stage three of this project, is having these songs that fit in the same world in an album of sorts, but shorter. So rather than vanishing for a year and a half to write an album, I want to keep interacting with people who’ve been supportive of my music, but I also want the works to be cohesive and to create this cinematic world visually as well. So, for me, it’s all about creating this mini world, and I’m excited for it,” he said.
Vumaala shared his feelings about developing into a performing artist, a frontman of his music. He talked about the perks the door has introduced him to and the various downsides appendant to the transition.
“I love the change with my whole heart. The amount of creative freedom that comes with being an artist is immense. That being said, the amount of creative responsibility is also significant. I think that has also been a learning curve and how the buck has to stop somewhere, and as an artist, it stops with you. Your vision is what matters, and you have to carry it out every step of the way. What I’ve enjoyed in the process is learning how to be creative in more ways than just making music.
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“It starts with music, but then you also have to think about what to do for the album art, for visualisers, for content on social media. These are all things you should think about as an artist. Whereas as a producer, your main focus is the music and only that. So now I’ve had to put on many, many hats to keep me creatively engaged, even though it’s a lot. I’m learning to adjust to these changes while being thrilled about the development. The stakes are higher, and so is the pressure because all the mistakes you make are your own,” he said.
The producer touched on how being able to cull sounds from other genres and incorporate certain elements has been instrumental in his growth as a musician.
“I think if you exist in a singular space, it becomes difficult to iterate in that space. I have enjoyed the journey of being an artist because I can pull from different genres. Because of that, I get to learn from better people within certain genres than I am, and I get to borrow certain elements I like. Anyone creating music is doing their approximation of the genre. Let’s say you are a producer trying to make amapiano; you are making your own personal approximation of what it is, which ends up becoming your particular style. And I think that if enough people approximate towards the same endpoint, a genre is born, which has certain flagship traits about it. There were times when I’d count myself out of doing certain genres because I didn’t feel like my approximation was good or close enough to what became the genre. But I’ve come to understand that if I try my absolute best to get close to the genre and have real respect for where it comes from, then I can take what I can and incorporate the sound into my music,” he said.
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Vumaala shared folk as one of the sounds he desired to dabble in someday in the future.
“I’d love to incorporate more folk music into my stuff. When I started out my current project, I listened to a lot of sad and incredibly depressing acoustic folk music like Phoebe Bridgers. I just love the storytelling and songwriting. I’d love to put that into my music when it makes sense. I think emotively, right now in my life, I’m not at a point where I want to write heartbreaking songs as Phoebe does. But there’ll probably be a time in my life where doing that will be relevant, so I’d like to incorporate those instrumentals when I can and when it’s necessary should the time come,” he said.
