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DJ Skaiva

Bongani Ndlovu, Showbiz Correspondent
AWARD winning DJ Skaiva believes his upcoming album Against All Odds will be a testimony of his life’s journey as a musician, producer and DJ where he overcame hardships and pain to be where he is.

Last year after winning the best house album at the Zimbabwe Music Awards, DJ Skaiva, real name Mqondisi Sibanda, thanked fans by releasing a club hit, Imali yeqolo featuring Cijay.

DJ Skaiva said he has endured a lot of pain and ridicule over the past years as an artiste and that has spurred him to work on an album.

“This year I’m releasing an album Against All Odds (AAO) but dates are yet to be confirmed as I’m still talking with potential distributors and publishers.

The album is about what I’ve been going through in the past four years as a DJ and producer. The good thing is that I didn’t give up on my dreams and I kept working hard ignoring the people’s negative opinions,” said DJ Skaiva.

He said it was discouraging for people to ridicule him and other artistes from the city.

“Some used to tell us that as long as we were from Bulawayo and stay in Bulawayo, we were  going to be broke.We don’t blame them it’s their time and my time is coming against all odds, I’ll achieve my dreams,” said DJ Skaiva.

He said besides working on releasing his album he was also working on collaborations and a tour.

“I’m working on an EP called Skaiva and Rakeem for lover only. We worked with ExQ and this year as Skaiva I’m doing collabos with many artistes from Harare such as Cynthia Mare, Chengeto Brown and Uluhle Ncube from UK,” he said.

DJ Skaiva has produced tracks such as Godobori, Sweet Jesus (which got him a Metro FM nomination), It’s Love, Calvin’s track Fronto and Thando by Crème Voices.

Starting off as a DJ at Mpopoma High School at the age of 13 in 2004, DJ Skaiva was popular with pupils as he was their DJ at school bashes. Two years later, he began creating house beats inspired by America’s Louis Vega, South Africa’s Black Coffee and DJ Tiesto from Germany.

It was only in 2008 that he released his first track – Ndebele Rebels on Sound Cloud. The track got about 6 000 downloads in its first week. In 2011, DJ Skaiva released Day Dreamer with former Harvest House youth pastor Brian “Rakeem” Bangura on vocals. That was his first song to receive airplay on Power FM.

The track was so popular that South African record label, Soul Candi, signed and released the track under its stable. In the same year, Day Dreamer hogged the number one spot on Metro FM, 5FM and Botswana’s RB2.

In 2014, Rakeem and Skaiva teamed up with South Africa’s DJ QT to release Sweet Jesus that got them two nominations – Best Urban Gospel and Best Dance track at the 2015 Metro FM awards.

-@bonganinkunzi