CAYUMAN

CAYUMAN (born Thamsanqa C Sapeta) is a South African jazz guitarist, music producer and poet who has been actively involved in bringing free poetry performances to the local community since 2007. He has also been part of “The American Corner” poetry sessions in Pretoria held at the Sammy marks square library. He has attended countless American Corner sessions and he also performed his poetry there. Cayuman hosted a number of OPEN MIC sessions encouraging the youth to take interest in the art of literature, poetry and hip-hop. These sessions were held at the Mamelodi West community hall, Mamelodi East community hall and various clubs in Mamelodi.

CAYUMAN is the main driving force behind Juicy Records Pty Ltd and DJ Guava Juice. Juicy Records is a small record label that offers a range of services including copywriting, graphic design, photography, videography and production of radio adverts. The label mainly produces house and hip-hop music.

From as early as 1996 while he was still in primary school he was already making pocket money playing music at house parties. At this stage he was using cassettes. He was introduced to Vinyl’s in 2000 by a dj named Eric who was a tenant at Thami’s home.

Thami built up his first djaying computer from parts acquired from upgrading and fixing other people’s computers. He then started using Vinyl Emulation software “tactile” this made life a little easier because he could now carry a lot more music by computer. When the music scene evolved into CDs Eric started giving Thami small gigs and he performed well. By 2003 Thami had already put together his own loud sound system that consisted of a Technics amplifier, two twin speakers and a short bass speaker that was home-made.

Thami kept up to date with the ever evolving Djaying world up until he started composing his own music in 2008 but he did not publish any of it. He honed his craft for a while and first published some music early 2012 but the music was not registered with the creative bodies. He also made a bit of money from websites such as “kasimp3.co.za” which paid artists 20c per download on their platform. His first single titled “give it all” did well and earned him a couple of international friends on the internet.

Thami was nicknamed “Guava Juice” in 1989 when he was three years old by a neighbour. In his early DJ career he introduced himself as “Dj Juice” but resorted to using his full nickname in 2013 for the sake of being unique on the internet.