Kalahari Surfers
Warrick Swinney (born in 1958), more commonly known as Warrick Sony, is a South African composer, producer, musician and sound designer. He is the founder and sole permanent member of the Kalahari Surfers. They made politically radical satirical music in 1980s South Africa, and released it through the London-based Recommended Records. During this time the Surfers toured Europe with English session musicians.
Sony/Swinney produced albums, and ran the Shifty Music label at BMG (Africa) for two years in the mid-1990s with a passion for pan-African music he developed and imported records by many then unknown African artists. He was responsible for signing, for the Shifty/BMG Label Salif Keita's seminal Soro album as well as albums by S.E.Rogie (Palm Wine Guitar), Kasse Made (Foro)and Ray Lema (Medecine); all now rare vinyl for the collector.
Sony/Swinney has also worked as a film sound recordist, sound designer and sound artist and eventually after a hijacking incident moved to Cape Town with the Shifty Studio.
Based in the city, and working at Milestone Studios from 2000 to 2018, he worked in the commercial sector on film, ads,radio,theatre and released more Kalahari Surfers albums. He moved into more specialised work in sound art, music and DJ events in the city and was accepted to do an MFA at Michaelis School of Art University of Cape Town where he graduated with distinction in 2020. During the following years he taught sound-art courses at Michaelis and worked towards a PhD with a 2020 Andrew W. Melon Foundation Fellowship. He completed this in 2024 at the University of the Western Cape.
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