DJ Spoko

DJ Spoko was born Marvin Ramalepe, raised in the rural town of Tzaneen in northern South Africa (where he says there was no first or third class,all the same).” He started producing on a PC at age 12,after moving with his brother Kelly Rams Ramalepe to Atteridgeville (a 99%-black township outside the mostly white city of Pretoria) to find their father. They lived in an area called Ghost Town, near Atteridgeville’s cemetery, where, as the neighborhood’s premiere producer,young Spoko earned the nickname The Ghost.

Bacardi House has been fermenting for over a decade. For three years in the early 2000s DJ Spoko traveled 40 miles south to Soweto, where he studied sound engineering in the studio of Nozinja, creator of the hyper-speed, hip-shaking Shangaan Electro style. After, when Spoko built his own studio back home, he took a producer named DJ Mujava under his wing, leading to Spoko’s great but uncredited triumph as the percussion mastermind behind Mujavas Bacardi House indebted Township Funk.”

His sound consumed the township, passed around on numerous full- length cassette releases with names like ‘Grave Yard Session’, The All C’Ing I, and Tombs & Graves and, following the success of his tapes, Spoko met True Panther Sounds Founder Dean Bein. Dean stayed in Atteridgeville for a while and they agreed to work together and release an EP

Spoko’s Ghost Town EP was released on True Panther in 2013. Since the release of Ghost Town (his first official western release) Spoko has continued to develop his own Ghetto Boyz entertainment, working with local Atteridgeville talent, while collaborating with international stars such as Idris Elba and Spoek Mathambo on documentary projects highlighting the explosive contemporary electronic and dance music scene in South Africa. War God, Spoko’s first official album was released on Lit City Trax in 2014, as well as the first album from Spoek Mathambo’s ‘Fantasma’ project and looking to the future there is yet more Bacardi indebted music on the horizon with DJ Mujava, True Panther Sounds, Lit City and more!