Meet Aero Manyelo

Lungu Lungu: Meet Aero Manyelo, the South African House Producer Dancing to His Own Beat

Story written by Benjamin Lebrave

Ghana-based Benjamin Lebrave speaks fluent French and English, and can schmooze in Spanish and Portuguese. He’ll report on new African music every month for the Lungu Lungu column. Today, he meets South African house music producer Aero Manyelo to find out what drives his innovative spirit. 

If at any point in your life you’ve been into house music, or electronic dance music in general, visiting South Africa is a surprising and exciting experience. House music is everywhere. Barber shops, sportswear stores, restaurants, taxis, even background music at the mall.

The genre is house, the business behind it is the same as anywhere else: the biggest names have heavy machinery behind them, and attract much of the attention. A few DJs and producers at the top dictate what much of the South African house music output sounds like.

Luckily for our ears—and for this column—there are also passionate artists who make music they want to hear, rather than music they think most people want to hear. Aero Manyelo is one of these artists, a seasoned house music producer who’s first official release came out in 2007. He has kept his course and has been steadily rising ever since. International releases on Outhere and Sound Pellegrino, and now the simultaneous release of two full length albums on Herbal 3 Records and Akwaaba.

Who is Aero Manyelo, and how did you get started with music? My name is Chobolo Eric Manyelo—my stage name is Aero Manyelo. I was born in the Limpopo province of South Africa, and grew up in the Ivory Park township of Johannesburg. When I was 16 years old I got my first computer, and since then I have never looked back. I got a demo version of the ACID music software [and] played around with the loops that came with the software, but the funny part is I couldn’t save the songs because the software was a demo version, so I used to create new songs every time I opened the program. It didn’t bother me though, because I thought that’s how it was supposed to be! In 2003 I got Fruity Loops, now known as FL Studio, I started creating my own melodies and programming my own drums. I still use FL to date.

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