Cara Frew is lacing the international scene with a South African flavour
|||Helen Herimbi
Shortly after launching her EP, Come Close To Me, in Joburg, Cara Frew jetted off to Miami to play at Ultra with Black Coffee. Then it was off to Los Angeles to work on some new music. When I speak to the singer-songwriter, she’s standing in front of the Warner Bros office in London, having just left a meeting at Universal Music’s offices.
The independent pop artist is “really picking people’s brains at the moment. Getting advice. Linking up. It’s all about networking and getting feedback and seeing who they can link you up with in terms of producers and writers”.
In LA, she linked up with Stealing Love Jones’ frontwoman, Esjay Jones, who relocated from South Africa and now makes a living as a writer and producer in the US.
“I met her about three years ago,” says Frew. “I’m a huge fan of her work and am really excited to get together with her. She’s also a producer so together, we’re co-producing some stuff that’s coming out pretty cool.
“We wanted to keep that South African flavour,” says the jetsetter. “We want to be recognised internationally, but still fly our South African flag high.”
This is one of the reasons why she has been using the hashtag #afropop to describe the new music to her Frew Crew on social media.
“I’ve been using that hashtag because I’m still doing pop vocals over African-inspired beats,” she tells me. “So it’s still very pop and universally palatable, but there are those African drums and shakers and things like that coming through in my music. It’s not Afro-pop as in Mafikizolo,” she laughs. “I’m not trying to be something I’m not. It’s about the influences I grew up with, really. Bringing that into the pop world.”
Having first burst onto the scene by auditioning for Idols in 2013, Frew has since taken her time to carve her own path. With Come Close to Me, she recruited Dan Heath – who worked with Lana del Ray – and Stefan Starbek (who worked with Amy Winehouse) to co-write and produce the four-track EP.
“It was quite an experience to work with two incredibly talented musicians who worked with my idols,” she says excitedly.
The current single from the EP is Weightless, an ethereal pop ditty that is inspired by a past relationship of Frew’s. The EP carries a water theme with it with songs like Dive included.
“There are always references to water because at the time, I was going through those feelings when sometimes you feel fresh and other times, you feel like you are drowning. There are mixed emotions that water can give you, but it can also give you life.”
Frew also made a splash with Falling, a 5FM chart-topping tropical house song that was produced by The Kiffness’ David Scott. But it wasn’t until she featured on I Will Find You, the first single off Black Coffee’s latest album, that she really received recognition in the mainstream.
After meeting Black Coffee in Amsterdam, she e-mailed him (at his request) with hopes of collaborating. But he never responded to her mails. Then, when Nelson Mandela died, she tweeted a link of a tribute song she’d performed directly to the house maestro and immediately received a response from him.
“At that stage, I was based in France because the World Games were in about six months and as the South African team, we were training,” she recalls. “For two months, I wrote 20 top lines for this one track and Nathi (Black Coffee) kept saying: ‘You’re going in the right direction, but it’s not there yet.’”
Eventually, the pair got it together and Frew came home to record the song. When it was time to shoot the video, Frew couldn’t leave France so Black Coffee flew himself to Paris and knocked out the video. Back to her current body of work, Frew says: “I just want people to enjoy it. It’s cinematic pop that is really personal to me.” She will release a new house song, Invisible, on June 10.
Come Close to Me is available on iTunes.