HERU

Having grown up in London, Charisse studied music journalism at the University of the Arts (UAL) where she met Work It host and DJ Loren Platt — who supported her transition from writing to DJing. Taking her knack for storytelling to the decks, she and Platt formed cross-disciplinary collective KNKTU, kicking off her career in running events and her love for the medium. Storytelling is a central aspect of her song selection and curation, though her background as a music journalist has undoubtedly shaped the way she sees DJing as a mechanism for communicating wider ideas and values to a receptive audience. “I’m a storyteller first and foremost,” she tells me. “I consider DJing as a medium for the things I want to share within the world and with others.”

Taking her raconteur role even further, she began her Abantu Radio show on No Signal during lockdown in 2020 — with an aim to highlight the rich musical heritage of the African subcontinent. “Abantu means people in Zulu, Xhosa and Ndebele, which are Nguni languages,” she tells me. Abantu Radio has seen in both local and international talents, with her first interview featuring Aymos, a South African amapiano artist and songwriter, and since then she’s hosted a roster of talent including Niniola, Oskido and DBN Gogo. Since then she’s launched the Abantu Pod, a narrative-driven podcast exploring the stories behind the music and culture of the Bantu people, and most recently, established a party – with the inaugural Abantu having taken over East London’s Werkhaus back in June.

The journey from radio show to making Abantu come to life in the flesh has been one of constant curation, thoughtfulness and archiving, using every opportunity to showcase Southern African talent and uplift artists who aren’t yet in the spotlight. As someone who went to Charisse’s first Abantu event, it’s a spiritual atmosphere that anyone in attendance will immediately feel immersed in. “I very much care about people, and everything that I do is always people first, so I wanted to create a space that reflected that people first ethos in the music and I wanted people to experience freedom in that space.” she tells me. Adaptability and sensing the crowd’s needs are two aspects that determine her sets, but despite these push and pull factors, Charisse C has an unmistakably strong style that listeners become entranced in.

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Being Black British has positioned her at a unique intersection, and her South African and Zimbabwean heritage translates into her music. The sudden growth of amapiano across the globe has meant new opportunities to perform as an artist are cropping up all the time, with Charisse C flying to Ibiza for her second Boiler Room set, to Amsterdam on her birthday weekend, to South Africa, the home of the genre. She recognises the stratospheric rise of the genre within the UK, from Major League DJz to selling out Brixton, Scorpion Kings bringing the genre to Printworks last year, or DBN Gogo performing at Notting Hill Carnival. But for Charisse C, it’s important to remember where amapiano comes from: “Because the music is from here, there’s only so much you can get from the UK because everything we’re experiencing has been exported out from here,” she says. “Every time I come back to the UK, I come back rejuvenated, and reinspired and with more to give.”