What I've learnt: Pops Mohamed

The musician on preserving tradition, travelling and being a Muslim

Pops Mohamed is an award-winning South African musician and producer. Famed for his range of styles, which include kwela, pop, jazz and soul, and known by fans as The Minister of Music, he plays a wide variety of traditional instruments including the African mouth bow, berimbau, didgeridoo, kora and the thumb piano. He lives in Joburg and has three children.

My parents were very supportive of my music career from the beginning. My father took me to lessons. I started gigging around Joburg and Pretoria with my first band, Les Valiants, when I was about 14. We wrote original music and had a couple of hit singles. After June 1976 I needed a good reason to continue doing what I was doing. People wanted messages of hope in their music. I looked back to my roots, to the miners in the shebeens playing indigenous African instruments.

Studying traditional African instruments and music was my contribution to the struggle. They were vanishing. So, I did workshops at Dorkay House with ethnomusicologist Andrew Tracey. I started playing the kalimba and developed a certain sound, and was still playing in pop bands. I tried to recreate the sounds I heard as a child. It was the beginning of my journey.

The kind of music I make is not commercial. It's for a niche market. Internationally, it has really been appreciated, especially after 1994, when South Africa became such a focal point. The timing was right. I play at lots of festivals and travel constantly.

Until the early 1990s, I had never travelled. I had a wife and three kids and was dreaming of making it big someday. I joined up with Rashid Valli and Basil Coetzee and moved to Orange Grove and worked in a record store. I just wanted to be closer to a record label.

I keep all my plane tickets and boarding passes. I don't know why.

If I had a choice, I'd live in Zanzibar. It's an amazing place and very mystical. I performed at the Festival of Dhal there and am so inspired by that island.

As a Muslim, I am semi-religious. I go to mosque and observe fasts. In Actonville, Benoni, where I grew up, there was a mix of different religions. We'd go to each other's houses. There's a lot of ignorance. It's time the world realised Muslims and terrorists are different things.

I make terrible choices in women.I've had two great relationships - one with my wife. We're divorced now. I know the answer, but keep on bumping my head against the wall and get kicked in the nose every time. I choose the wrong women for me and then want to blame them. But it's me. Relationships on the rebound are not good, but it can be lonely as hell sometimes.

If you want to make it as a musician then stay focused. Don't get distracted. Believe in yourself. Concentrate, practise and be around musicians. Listen to all styles of music.

I'm optimistic about South Africa.I love my country. Whenever I return home, I have a big smile on my face. There's racism in all countries, especially in England, where I lived for a while. Here, we just want to carry on with our lives, get on with things. If someone says something racist, we laugh: what era are you from?