Kwesta On ‘Piano Love’: “My Character Is Not A ‘Piano Artist”

‘Piano Love’, a movie starring Kwesta and Bontle Modiselle, is hitting Netflix on August 23. 

The film is said to be “a captivating thrill ride as we watch young love blossom against all odds.” 

The film’s tagline is “Two lives, two dreams, one log drum. An Amapiano love story.”

In the Q&A below, we catch up with Kwesta about the upcoming movie.

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This is your debut role. Tell us about the expansion into acting. 

Yeah, this is my debut role. I like that you said debut cause you opened yourself up to the possibility of being others. I wanted to involve myself in an art I appreciate and try out new things. I’ve been making music now for 17 years and I kinda wanted to try something and see if I could. And when you’ve been doing something for 17 years, it’s almost repetitive, you know what’s gonna happen. 

So, diving into acting is a completely new thing for me, and I haven’t had new things to do. For me it’s a way to find out if I’m good at it and find my voice in it and express myself through it. I had a whole lot of help from Black Brain and Mandla N especially in terms of acting cause when he first made the call I almost didn’t wanna do it, but he kinda pushed me into believing until we did. Cause I didn’t wanna disrespect the acting space. That thing is tough, it’s long days, it’s constantly being in character. We will see how it goes, I will play my part by taking classes and improving my acting. So, this is definitely an introduction to acting.

What drew you to the story? 

What drew me to the story is literally the similarity of the character and myself. I mean it is a movie so some things are extremely exaggerated compared to my real life. Navigating through life going through a slump and finding your way back up is really something I connect with. That I know very well. My character is someone from the hood who makes music, he goes on to be dope and everyone loves him. Shit hit the fan, he has to regroup and build himself/confidence up again. I saw myself in the role which was great cause it’s something familiar with, I don’t have to method act or anything. It wasn’t a hard switch from Kwesta to the character.

‘Piano Love’ over ‘Love and Hip Hop’… what’s the difference?

Look, I don’t think there’s a difference. It’s all black urban culture. It’s all a matter of the genre; you either pick beats and rhymes and drums or log drums and dance. Buts it’s really about how we navigate love and how love finds its way through all of that. Through the art of music. It’s a movie about love. The backstory is clearly Piano, but it could have been any other genre. I must say though, my character is not a ‘Piano artist. I somehow have to make that clear.

Read: Love & Hip Hop South Africa: A Win Or L For SA Hip-Hop?

Tell us about the experience of working with Bontle.

The experience of working with Bontle was dope. I drew a lot from her too. She had acted before, yes she’s a dancer and wears a lot of hats pretty much. But she had done this whole thing before and I hadn’t, so I was drawing from her a lot of times and the whole crew. I didn’t walk in there thinking, ‘Yo, I’m Kwesta, y’all gon do this my way.’ No, I walked in there work sponge and all and tryna soak in as much as I can. 

So, she helped a lot with that. She was like within the whole sets and scenes, she was the ease to everything, she brought a certain calm and joy and glee to the whole thing. And that made me really comfortable, especially in the scenes we were doing kinda together cause we also not strangers so there’s jokes in between to kinda calm the nerves. 

So, she played a big role to making sure I’m calm and she did that without even sorta purposely doing it. It was just the energy she brought. She’s amazing and her character is really dope. It was one of her hats, it was my first one.

Is this you hanging the mic and taking the silver screen? 

No not at all, this isn’t Kwesta hanging up his mic. Not at all. This is not the conversation. It adds to what Kwesta does.

When can we expect new music?

I’m definitely dropping new music before the end of the year. For now, let’s focus on ‘Piano Love’ and sooner than you think, I’ll let y’all know when I do. I haven’t hung up my mic, it’s been in use, we just have to hit the share button. But definitely there’s music coming.

‘Piano Love’ is premiering on Netflix on August 23.