HOLDING SPACES WITH NEXA
Finding new artists and doing a deep dive into their work has always been a favourite past time of mine. The beautiful era of the early 2010s internet did wonders for my tendency towards hyperfixation. If I wasn’t reading screenplays written by Childish Gambino, I was watching documentaries on the SAVEMONEY crew, or simply trawling Frank Ocean lyrics on Genius until the early hours of the morning.
Nexa gave me an opportunity to find that joy again. Ntsika’s review of their ‘Ugli Day’ EP last year was probably the first point at which I realised that there are artists and sounds found here locally which were right up my alley. But that was just the start.
When I stumbled upon Vriety and Chaylon J through the single ‘Holdfast’, that old itch reawakened and I couldn’t stop myself from scratching. There were hidden depths to plumb. And an interview with Nexa was the perfect opportunity.
They jumped on the video call with aplomb, almost bursting at the seams with energy, ready to tell me all about themselves, their work, their family, and so much more.
All images by @mashudutshikota
Tell us about yourself. Who is Nik Dawson, who is Nexa, and what was the creative journey that led up to this point?
“So one thing you should know about me is that I can't sit still. That’s why there are so many things that I do. I started my journey in visual arts, you know like when you're in the garden and they make you finger paint and do all the weird things. I kind of carried that over into high school where I did art. But the closest I got to music was dancing.”
“A lot of my family are artistic and musically inclined, so I was always around music but never really wanting to do it for myself. When I got to varsity I studied a psychology degree because I wanted to do Musical Therapy, which is a treatment mainly directed at bi-polar people and autistic people.”
“I’m autistic and a lot of the way that I processed being around people - such as interacting with people and learning how to make friends - was through music a lot of the time. Dancing and stuff like that, movement, and art, it helps me connect with other people so that’s why I was in those spaces.”
“I was doing random singing gigs here and there but I wasn’t really into it into it. I joined my campus radio station my first year of varsity, and that was also because I couldn't make any friends (laughs), so I figured let me enter this space that inherently pools creative people and see what happens.”
“During that time I was trying to figure out my own artistry as a musician, but I didn't know what I really wanted to do. I was kinda referencing a lot of Kehlani and Jhene Aiko, but I wasn't exactly good at it. I was purely trying to copy paste, instead of finding my own artistry in it.”
“At the campus radio station I was purely doing music - I was a music compiler for a long time. Eventually they approached me to be the Head Music Manager for the station which was a wild opportunity. During that time I essentially helped artists that no one really knew, those that had a really loyal following but not a big following.”
“I kind of did my own research in helping these artists, so it was almost a personal field study. If I were to do this for real what would I do with the issues and obstacles that they were facing? I was training myself by helping the spaces around me, and now being in those same spaces as an artist myself is quite a trip.”
“A year and a half ago 5fm poached me because at that point I had put so many artists on and I had created so many events for live music in Pretoria - I had even won a couple of music radio awards at that point.
“The opportunity came through at the perfect time because I was moving out of the learning space into a space where I needed to know exactly what I was doing, where things were a bit more serious. Moving into that new space I knew that okay cool, I’m Nik Dawson, this is what I present as myself. But what else? What else am I other than the workhorse that I am?”
“That was how Nexa kind of came about. I don't want to be in broadcasting for the rest of my life. If anything I want to draw back into the idea of being a musical therapist, but in a different way. I feel like I’ve done that in a lot of ways already, but I want to be more intentional about it. If I’m going to do it then I want to put my whole foot in it, and not just whenever I can.”
So when did you actually start putting yourself out there with regards to the music? The Nexa Spotify profile goes back to last year, but were there iterations before that?
“Oh definitely. Around the time I was doing the referencing to Jhene and Kehlani. At that point I also wasn't very in touch with my queer identity, my stage name was even my government name. That person and that artist, they didn't know what they were doing in a sense of what their sound was. It was a lot of trying to figure out what sounds right, but it wasn't consistent.”
'“I held on to that avatar for very long because I was holding onto an idea of what I thought music could do for me, versus what it actually did. So that’s also why I kind of abandoned that avatar, because that person isn't the person I am now. That is a completely different entity. But yeah that music tracks back to 2018 maybe.”
From all the stages and avatars you’ve gone through, what has been your personal journey with your creativity and your creative process? Have you learned how to get in touch with it and nurture it, in a productive, or rather a healthy way?
“I’m gonna say the most unhealthy thing in the world right now. Unfortunately my best creative work comes from a lot of pain. A lot of my creative process has been trying to transmute pain into art that has the opposite effect of what it’s done to me. If I feel extremely alone, or extremely sad, I’m trying to transmute that into something that will make people feel not so alone, and a part of something more.”
“A lot of my creative process is actually shadow work. It’s a lot of ‘why am I feeling this way’ and how best can I approach this without essentially destroying myself from the inside. How can I make this separate from me without completely pulling too much out of me? That’s when I’ll pull in Vriety. I’ll be like ‘Hey dude, I’m feeling some typa way, this is how I’m feeling’ and then for some reason he’ll pick up a guitar and start playing something, and now we’re writing music.”
“When the people around me , or when I personally can't physically or emotionally process something, it becomes a thing of lets just use our hands, lets just pick up something. And that is usually the process, it's never an intentional thing.”
“I feel now more than anything it's about ‘What do we want to bring across?’. Are we showing off? Are we paying tribute to or referencing something that is intrinsically part of our artistry? I can say that with the Picnic EP a lot of the inspiration is India Arie, because her music in the 2000s was literally my soundtrack to everything that went wrong in my head.”
“And that is usually the process, it's never an intentional thing. It’s very much what's happening in the moment, or holding space for something that has happened.”
In a more general sense, with conversations about things like gender identity and mental health being a lot more prevalent and accepted, do you think that the introspection that those conversations incite has fostered a more raw and soulful sound from the independent artists that populate the scene?
“Completely, I feel like the reason why there is so much more raw and honest music is because people are more understanding of listening to those things. I think I wouldn't be as comfortable to even make art in general if that wasn't prevalent, if there wasn't this slight bit of openness to know that people actually go through some shit, and people are able to share it in a way that isn't overtly ‘here are my problems’.”
“There is also an opposing side to that. Okay cool let's talk about these things because in a sense then we all experience the catharsis. But it's also this thing of like how far can you push this vulnerability until it's a bit triggering?”
“How desensitised can we act as artists? I feel in two worlds about it all the time. Let's talk about it, let's have these spaces, but let's not sensationalise it to the point where almost everyone wants to be a part of it, to a point that people don’t want to interact with it at all because it's too big of a problem.”
If I can ask a personal question, how has your journey with your gender identity informed your craft?
“It’s reaffirmed the notion that I’m limitless, and that I wasn't built to be in a box, to understand myself as one binary or specific thing.”
“Unfortunately, or fortunately for me, I can’t sit still and with that comes this constant need to grow and better. Not to be different entirely, but to experience more than what I think I can. It’s also been this dismantling of what I’ve been told that I deserve, or what I can achieve.”
“My whole life has been like if you’re a woman in music you have all these things to do, besides the fact that you have to be a personality on top of that. Whereas I know that I don't have to experience any of that. I have no blueprint! And that is so freeing.”
“I get to build my own narrative, I get to build the communities and places where I get to experience people and also where they experience me. People who do not want to experience a cishet woman in folk or indie music, who do not connect to that or relate to that now have a space.”
“There’s a very limited way to speak about things like love, family, relationships, from a hetero perspective. Versus my non-binary pansexual pov where everything is very very different you know. It just allows me to reflect, but also to give people a lens into my own lil queer world.”
You referenced your community in your Picnic video interview. We were introduced to Vriety and Chaylon J through your music, so we’re very intrigued to find out - What is the family like?
“For a start, Maybe a quarter of us are actually musicians. The family has a ‘label’, let's just say that. For example, when someone has an idea, like when I had this idea for Picnic, I went to them like ‘This is what I wana do, I would really like if you could help me on this, if you could help me on that’. All of us are like okay cool, let’s put it together, let's do it. It’s always a family affair.”
“When Vriety makes music we all jump on it, when Chaylon makes music we all jump on it. It's just a symbiotic mitochondria you know what I’m saying, it's the powerhouse of the cell! It's the sense of anything and everything can happen, as long as we’re all together. And then we all just sit around and help each other, we share resources and share support.”
“That’s why I say, I can’t do anything without them, it really is a working machine. The community is a working machine that just wants to help everyone, but also just create art.”
“We should all be working horizontally. It’s weird to want to outsource higher than you when there are so many people willing to help you. Because that’s not how we grow people!”
Tell me about the podcast that you ran, ‘That’s a Them problem’. How did it come into fruition, how did it come into being, and what’s been happening with it since?
“So it came into fruition because like I said I’m autistic and I'm really really bad at speaking to people. There were a lot of times that I felt like I couldn't articulate myself or my problems. But also I couldn't open myself up to the people that were actually there to hear me. There were a few times where I was the person in my community that people could come to, but I just didn't know how to lean on them in the same way. So I was very much like If you need something I’m here, but if I need something then I disappear for a coupla months.”
“It also stems from the fact that I have a very tumultuous relationship with my family. If I could write a comprehensive newsletter to my parents, to my family, where I could tell them everything about me that they weren't there to experience or they would never have had the space to listen to me - to actually listen without rebuttal.”
“I did it at a time where I was learning how to essentially mix my own music but also learn audio production. That's why I made a project of it, because it was an opportunity to learn, while also sharing, and just help me articulate the things that I couldn't articulate.”
“I was able to bring on the people that I loved having conversations with, but also give them the opportunity to speak because they had so much to say. It was just a great way to bring my community back to me in a way that I could also extend.”
“That was 2 years ago, and I took a sabbatical because I wanted to make the podcast visual, and when I realised I didn't have the resources I took a longer sabbatical. And now, its funny that you should bring it up, because Vriety said the other day, ‘I can film it for you, let’s start again’. And it’s only because someone messaged Vriety asking ‘When is Nik bringing the podcast back because lowkey that shit was getting me through my mornings.’”
“I’ve been relistening to the podcast, and to the things that Little Nik was saying, and there’s so much that’s changed that I would love to speak about, that I would love to unpack and debunk. Firstly what was going through that person’s mind then, but also how that has helped me be so direct now. So it’s coming back. Just stay tuned.”
Reflecting on your personal journey, how would you define a creative? And to the creatives that don't consider themselves Capital C ‘Creatives’, how should they rethink their passions?
“I’ll start by answering the last part. If you don’t think you’re creative but want to be, tap back into the shit that made you happy as a kid. There’s such a thick and definitive line between childlike experiences and being free, and what you can make. If building Legos made you happy, if finger painting made you happy, if sandcastles made you happy, tap back into that. Don’t have a reservation for you as an adult doing kiddy stuff, that separation is bullshit. Just do what you want to do.”
“And then I would say what makes a great creative, an artist, is someone that just allows themselves to create without bounds. Without a social construct, without emotional boundaries, who just allows, just goes. And who is also unafraid of that. Someone who is strong about their art, is strong about the fact that it comes from them but maybe it doesn't. An artist is someone who believes that what they’re able to take from themselves and take outside of themselves, that work is able to connect with other people. I feel like the whole reason for art is to show what humans are going through in that specific time.”
So the new tape Picnic - what went into it and what can we expect from it?
“What went into it was a writing camp that myself and Vriety went on two years ago. We literally just packed our shit and went to a cabin in Polokwane and said ‘We’re gonna make music. We’re here to make music and nothing else.’”
“So a lot of the things that you’re gonna hear are like, the way that it’s recorded you can hear all the space, you can hear the size of the rooms that we were sitting in when we made the music. Which I think is so cool because it brings back this thing of putting you into the world that I was in when I made it. So that, and a lot of bass play, a lot of mood is what Picnic is.”
“There’s a video coming out for the first song this week which was beautifully shot by Mash my director and photographer, who’s also part of the family. The project is also a platform for the people that I work with. Everyone shines so beautifully in this little space, in this project that I made. There’s never a moment where you can hear ‘this is just Nexa’. You can hear the people that helped me are there. So yeah, it’s a beautiful offering to the people that helped me.”
I normally ask this question from a Capetonian lens, but I definitely want to hear your take about the scene up north. What is your opinion of the current cultural landscape, and where do you see it going from here?
“I think from a Jozi perspective there’s still a bit of favouritism in terms of genre. Hip hop is predominantly given so many spaces and so many platforms, and rightfully so because we have an amazing industry. But I feel like people like me and other alternative artists only have *this much*. Like if you’re not doing Your Weekly Touch Up, what else are you doing. If you’re not doing Mango Farm, what else are you doing? There are very limited things you can go to and spaces you can move in.”
“So my hope I guess is that as much as people fuck with hip hop and pop scenes, I hope that more alternative spaces come about.”
The treasure map that started with Ntsika’s review was a winding one, but well worth the adventure. Every turn yielded something new, and being able to chat to them was honestly one of the most engaging interviews I’ve had.
I don’t know if its just confirmation bias, but the further I plod on this journey, the more affirming these chats are. It’s a reminder of the limitless potential I once had, which we all do. And if someone tells me I should go do kiddy shit, I’m not going to wait around for a second opinon.
Stream Picnic now on all major DSP’s, and keep an eye on Nexa’s socials for what else they’re cooking up with the family. Rumour has it Chaylon J has something in the works too…
