Bravo dishes up new album
It hasn’t been easy, but Sinesipho Peter AKA Bravo Le Roux feels he is on the road to making a success of his music career.
The 25-year-old who hails from the dusty streets of Site B recently released an 11 -track album titled International Gubevu, featuring major Cape Town artists Yanga Chief and YoungstaCPT and the multi award-winning Slikour.
The single with Yanga Chief titled Amandla has already been dominating airwaves over the past year.
The soft spoken, charming artist says he it had always bothered him that artists who sing in English are thought to have an international flow. But when they rap or sing in vernacular they sound distinctly local.
He says through this album he wanted to show up and coming artists that they should feel comfortable rapping or singing in their vernacular and telling their own stories.
At school, he says, he participated in many arts competitions, at which he bagged numerous awards and in 2010 he was among a group of young artists who painted murals of soccer players on the walls of Khayelitsha to promote the world cup.
He has also tried his hand at designing clothes and was also a dancer.
In 2017 he enrolled at City Varsity but in the same year he was diagnosed with meningitis and depression.
He lost his work and his girl friend and things seemed to be going from worse to disastrous.
Two days after being admitted to Khayelitsha District Hospital, he escaped, and his sister, who works as a pharmacist took him under her wing. Slowly, with her help, he got his life back on track.
By the end of 2017, he was well, and by early the next year, he got a job. That same year he released a single recorded with his younger brother. This, he says, was the awakening of his passion for music.
It was the opportunity to open a show for Durban rapper Nasty C that pushed him to pursue music full-time. The song he had recorded with his brother, secured him the public’s vote to open for Nasty C, and three week’s later the rapper asked to meet his opening acts.
That day he quit his day job.
But things didn’t go his way. He was late for the meeting with Nasty C and the opportunity for his proverbial big break, was missed.
“I had burnt bridges and I had to move back to Khayelitsha because I could not go back to where I was living and I lost my job.
“This served as motivation because I did not want to be a failure to my parents, I mean they sent me to school and initiation school and yet my future seems not to a have direction. So this thing had to work. I did lots of opening acts and pushed my music,” he said.
Asked what keeps him going despite the many challenges he has faced, he says it is the fact that what he is doing now is not just about him and that artists from the township have the added responsibility of also being role models for their peers and other youngsters.
