You have a big “Peace Starts” initiative on the go at the moment called "Pledge for Peace" What can you tell us about that? “Peace Starts” started about five and half years ago, a friend of mine had told me about this great initiative that was founded in the late 90’s, which is basically a documentary. A film maker did a full on research report and doccie on peace and will it ever be attainable? And by doing this report he realized there was no day of peace. There are other days such as Valentine’s day, Christmas Day etc but there was no day for peace so he made it his mission to convince the United Nations to officially declare 21st September an International Day of Peace and they endorsed it and it was officially declared. So I saw the promo video that “Peace One Day” which is like a short intro film explaining the background of it all and it just completely blew my mind and I decided there and then that I wanted to dedicate my life to it. So Peace Starts started off with just doing music events to create the awareness and every year it has grown and grown. Then last year September instead of doing a music event we decided to do a yearlong campaign launching it on 21 st September and we called that campaign “Pledge for Peace” which is basically just welcoming and encouraging everybody to do something about it within their own means and whatever way they can. Weather it be to make a video or recording etc stating what you think peace means to you. Go onto our website to see how you can get involved www.peacestarts.co.za OK let’s talk about WONDERboom; you guys are one of South Africa’s biggest bands. Was it hard to become that well known and how long did it take you to reach what you’ve become today? When WONDERboom started, things were very different to the way they are now and there was a buzz in the industry that was quite undeniable and you kind of felt you were at the beginning of a musical revolution, There were bands like WONDERboom, Sugardrive, Springbok Nude Girls, Just Jinjer, Squeal that were just doing so well, there was a lot of bands at the time that were making real serious waves. It kind of helped having platforms in terms of festivals like Oppi Koppi and Splashy Fen to reach masses, but I think as South Africa was going through its own political change, a lot of other things also changed and I think it was easier for us then, than it is today because we were part of something that was quite new and radical and revolutionary with regards to original music in South Africa. The difficult thing has been to maintain that because you got to be current, you’ve got to keep busy, you’ve got to keep gigging and recording and just keep on being productive. I think cracking it in the beginning wasn’t so hard if you got something hot and new. Nowadays its quite a tough scene and I feel there has been an explosion because in all genres of music there’s some really, really good acts out there and I think now that we have a lot more access to music that is happening around the world from the big time pop hits to your more underground type of music. I think that the network is just so much greater now. So I think it’s tough now unless you just have something that’s fresh, and new and people pick up on it. I think what makes it difficult is when you don’t have sincerity on your side, like when you have the right song but the wrong format behind you or management or marketing etc. Or even radio not picking up on you, so a combination of that makes it harder than it used to be. So we shot to fame because it was a bit easier back then. But we also worked very hard to get where we are.
“there was a buzz in the industry that was quite undeniable and you kind of find that you were at the beginning of a music revolution”