Phone conversations are my preferred mode of interview these days, but I'm determined to arrange a video chat with Dwson. The 27-year-old South African artist comes from a mixed heritage and is classified by his country as a "Coloured." Being of mixed background myself, I'm excited to connect with him face to face, especially after spending time with his music. So far, he's only left Africa once, to play in Berlin, so I've only been able to watch him perform on YouTube. A recording of that two-hour set at Ipse's Hallo Montag has been on repeat in my studio for the past month. It's deep and exquisitely layered, a confident fusion of soulful house cuts, hints of Afrotech and groovy 4x4 flavours. Whether he's in the mix or in the studio, Dwson moves effortlessly through a variety of styles while keeping true to the sonic essence commonly referred to as an artist's "sound."

By his own admission, Dwson was a "busy and naughty" teenager, full of energy and likely to end up in trouble. He was just 16 when he first made it through the doors at Deluxe, one of Cape Town's longest running electronic music clubs, his prepubescent facial fluff getting him past the door staff. He'd been going to clubs since he was 14, mostly hip-hop and R&B spots, before he heard deep house. It was a "game changer."

"It's just a love thing man, it's totally different," he says. "When I saw that, I thought, 'This is what I want to do. These are the people I want to play for. This is the kind of connection I want to have with an audience.' I wanted someone to feel what I've been feeling."

The diversity of the crowds changed his outlook completely. "That's one thing I picked up with house music, different colours man," he says. "Super diverse, that was another reason why I fell in love with it. Once other people saw that, [promoters of] other genres tried to imitate that as well."

By the time he reached his mid-teens, Dwson had launched himself into DJing. He and a couple friends played mobile gigs at parties arranged by their classmates. After school Dwson went straight into a production course at Soul Candi, where he learned the basics of music theory, sound engineering and production software. At 17 he was DJing in a cafe, playing chilled house for the sunset slot. He moved on to clubs soon after, and together with some friends launched Dope Room, a party focused on representing various shades of house. It was a critical step in his career, a platform for him to curate a club night exactly as he wanted, bringing in friends and peers while showcasing his own abilities as a selector.

Dwson's parents supported his decision to pursue music, which provided a bedrock for him to keep pushing forward. Both his mother and father worked, but he says it was a struggle for them. He had to hold down a job alongside his studies, and eventually decided to take a year away from work to fully focus on his music.

With British deep house veteran Jimpster as a key inspiration, Dwson immersed himself in production. He found solace in the creative process; this was a safe place where he could explore and express a range of emotions that were often difficult to comprehend. He liked to have fun with it too, which is why you'll find a range of styles in his discography. There's space for a bit of everything, from hypnotic cuts like "Bermuda," to deep vocal licks like "Forbidden" (featuring Sio). His music has found a home on Stay True Sounds, Just Move, Aluku and Jimpster's Freerange outlet, among others.

Already prolific, Dwson has continued his high level of productivity since March, when South Africa's government initiated their lockdown. "For producers and artists it's been a lockdown forever," he jokes. "You do music every day, it's nothing new. Being at home, creating, that's nothing new for me."

Growing up in South Africa, whatever your ethnic background, presents a variety of complex economic, social and racial issues. The scars of the past are still visible. Inequality remains an issue 27 years after the end of apartheid. Unemployment is at an 11-year high, and violent crime is an ever-present concern—there were 21,325 reported murders in the country in 2019, a rate of about 58 every day.

For "Coloured" people like Dwson, life can be a strange purgatory between Black and white. During South Africa's torrid past, Coloureds were marginalised and often remain so now. According to the country's inhuman system of classification, they are above Black people and below whites.

"Being a Coloured has its hardships," Dwson explains. "You're not always taken seriously. No matter what you're doing, you're always looked at strange."

Coloured people were put into their own official category when apartheid began back in 1948, but their origins can be traced back to the 17th Century, with diverse ancestral genetics which include indigenous Khoisan, western European, Bantu people from South Africa and South/Southeast Asia. 80 percent of South Africa's Coloured population can be found in the Western Cape, and there are currently over 5.1 million across the country.

"There's a stereotype with us," Dwson says. "People just assume that we always have this aggressive manner and we all speak one language, Afrikaans, which is not the case."

Though he's never discussed the Coloured experience in detail with his mother and father, Dwson is well aware of the difficulties his ancestors have faced and the legacy of his ethnic categorisation. Coloured people are overlooked and undervalued, rarely featured in South African media, and have few role models. Things have gradually been improving, but it takes time for attitudes to change and for shifts in consciousness to permeate into everyday life.

All of which makes Dwson's rise as an artist even more impressive. He grew up in a predominantly Coloured neighbourhood called Factreton, and started out DJing for Coloured crowds. In his early 20s, word began to spread about Dope Room, and the racial makeup of the attendees diversified. By 2017 Dwson started picking up bookings in the majority Black townships.

"I remember my first time in a township, people were looking at me like, 'What's this Coloured fella doing here? What's he going to play for us? Hip-hop? R&B? We don't do that kind of thing here.'" As soon as he started to play, the faces of the audience changed as they accepted the newcomer. "That's the beautiful thing about music, it has a way of bringing all colours together."

Jazz lies at the roots of Dwson's musical upbringing. The genre, he says, is big in the Coloured community. He credits his father and his father's friends and family for imbuing his young mind with an appreciation for music. Get-togethers at the family home were always soundtracked by warm, upbeat records, with artists like Peter White, Bob James, George Benson, Al Jarreau and Jimmy Messina among his father's cherished collection.

It's difficult to fathom how the daily micro-aggressions and almost universal neglect of Dwson's race affects him day to day. While racism is prevalent across the UK, my complexion has rarely been an obvious issue growing up in London. Throughout my lifetime there have always been people of my colour in the media. My musical heroes were almost always mixed race or Black; Ice Cube, Goldie, Fabio & Grooverider, the list goes on. Coincidentally though, one of the few times I experienced overt racism was in South Africa.

"See what I mean?! That's what I feel 80 percent of the time," Dwson says when I tell him this. "Knowing that we have to push hard in the industry, makes me feel that I have to push twice as hard. Sometimes it benefits me in ways that I can't even see. Now things are happening ten-fold because I've got all of this behind me. It makes me strong and keeps me motivated on what's in front."

In the last three years Dwson's profile has grown rapidly. He's released two albums, Impulsiv in 2018 and Say Less in 2019. He won two national music awards: Best Underground Record, for "Luna" in 2018, and Best Music Video, for "Nobody Else" in 2019, beating local heroes Black Coffee and Da Capo. He gets regular radio plays—"very rare for a Coloured boy," he laughs. Bookings have taken him all over his home country, landing slots at an ever-growing number of festivals, including Oppikoppi, Red Bull Music Festival, Ultra, Rocking The Daisies, Synergy and Design Indaba.

Festival culture, Dwson explains, has been intrinsic to building bridges between disparate ethnic groups in South Africa. Over the last few years the country's festival scene has evolved, with several homegrown events taking place annually, alongside global powerhouse brands like Ultra. "We're in a good space now, things have been picking up," he says. "House music has grown, there are more festivals, and that's why things also grew in terms of diversity."

With no gigs since March, Dwson's only channel for expression has been his bedroom studio. He works with a basic set up: monitors, midi keyboard and laptop, a prime example of the less-is-more approach dictated by economic status. At one point he didn't even have monitor speakers, producing his music through a Hi-Fi system, but it worked for him, and mastering a rudimentary setup has allowed him to find that sweet spot between comfort and intuition. Some of his biggest tracks, including his breakthrough, "Luna," were made using that home entertainment system with a loosely connected soundcard to spice the process up even more.

"If it works for you, that's it. If you're able to work like that, then you can work on anything," he says. "It's also a good look for anyone who's looking up to us. You can work on anything, it's not about the 20,000 Rand synthesiser you've got. You can make big tunes from nothing. I've seen people with worse setups than mine and they smash it, man. It's not about the gear, it's about the hands and the soul."

Just before lockdown hit South Africa, Dwson played what would be his last gig for a while in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, at the city's first contemporary dance music club space, Muze. Six months on, he's missing DJing but has swerved livestreams, preferring real-world interaction to online performances. As he looks to an uncertain future, Dwson is optimistic about the direction South Africa is moving in. Music is bringing young people together, younger generations of Coloured people are starting to see more representation in the media and artists like Dwson are breaking through and succeeding. Acutely aware of what that means to his community, he is conscious to maintain a positive attitude, using his social media platforms to demonstrate that staying true to yourself is a crucial aspect of success.

"I still have a lot of work to do," he says. "I know that there are a lot of young ones looking at us, there's definitely a sense of responsibility. For Coloured artists it's so much easier for us to mess up because we're considered as the aggressive people, the outcasts. I want to show other people like us, 'If I can do it, you can do it. Doesn't matter the colour of our skin, you are gold, you can do whatever you want to do.'"