DJ Lag

In just six years, DJ Lag has established himself as a world-class sonic innovator and taken one of the exciting electronic music movements of the 21st century from South Africa into the global spotlight. Remarkably, Lwazi Asanda Gwala has achieved this while not yet 26 and while remaining deeply connected to the source of his creativity – the township of Clermont in the coastal city of Durban.

The movement that DJ Lag has pioneered is gqom, a Zulu word meaning drum or hit and which DJ and Hyperdub Records label head Kode9 has described as "like being suspended over the gravitational field of a black hole, and lovin' it". Propelled by DJ Lag’s prodigious musical gifts, this defiantly geographically specific sound has also found a devoted - and fast growing – international audience with DJ Mag anointing DJ Lag “the globe-conquering gqom king” in a September 2021 deep dive cover story that traced what it’s like to originate a genre, tour the world, work with superstars, keep creating and stay connected to your roots.

Kode9 was among the early champions of the bass-heavy, minimalist sound that DJ Lag was instrumental in taking from a staple of Durban’s clubs and school-leaving house parties and onto the international stage. His music journey had started when he began making original music - using little more than FruityLoops - while still at High School. Soon he was playing his tracks at underground gigs and sharing them with Durban’s taxi drivers who, in 2012, began using gqom tracks given to them by producers to attract customers.

But it was DJ Lag’s 2015 G-Star Raw x Boiler Room Sessions in Johannesburg that signaled to the rest of South Africa and the world that his was no ordinary dance talent. In its review New York-based The Fader wrote, “DJ Lag stepped up to the decks to show exactly why everyone’s going crazy for Gqom. The minimal house genre born from the coastal city of Durban is dark, heated, and easy to lose yourself in.” A year later he released his self-titled EP through London label Goon Club Allstars and DJ Lag’s ascendency into the upper ranks of the global music scene properly began.

Through hypnotic original tracks like “Ice Drop” and “Umlilo”, the music that DJ Lag told DJ Mag in an early profile was “made for clubs … made for nightlife” also proved to be made for DJs and electronic music fans across Europe, Asia and the United States. In a report on his self-released 2017 Trip To New York EP (which features another of his big tunes, “Khonkolo”) Pitchfork described him as an “international ambassador for the nerve-shredding thrills of gqom”.

Aged just 21, in the closing months of 2016 DJ Lag made his international live music debut with a tour that began at the Unsound Festival in Poland and finished up at Seoul’s Cake Shop. Since then he has played an impressive number of international dates (RedBull SonarDome at Sonar Barcelona,...