The youngest breakfast show host in South Africa has taken on the challenge of saving our country’s diverse, beautiful heritage this month!
South Africa is a country filled to the brim with diverse heritage and all of it matters. The only problem is that some people’s heritage is better looked after and recorded than others. This heritage month Dan Corder takes on the challenge to help South Africa save its heritage with a new segment on his breakfast radio show titled Hype Your Heritage.
Award-winning radio host Dan Corder has confidently taken over the reigns as the host of Good Hope FM Breakfast, weekdays from 06h00 to 09h00.
At the tender age of 24, Corder is officially the youngest presenter in the country to hold such a prestigious post on a commercial station, and it’s one he takes very seriously if not with a heavy dose of entertainment to rev listeners’ engines. The position also comes with an incredible amount of responsibility as Corder strives to take radio where no one has before and to represent the youth of South Africa to the best of his abilities.
Possessing an indescribable passion for local music, Corder has been a staple on Good Hope FM since 2015 as host of the Weekend breakfast Show. He then moved on to do a 100 day stand in for the Weekday breakfast Show. He has also hosted Beats by Dan (2017) as well as co-hosted The Hype (2016) where he established the campaign Finding the Hype.
Listeners across the Western Cape were encouraged to submit original music which would be carefully listened to and reviewed by Corder and his team. If songs were deemed worthy of radio airplay, the team would assist the artists in producing radio ready singles as well as aid them in registering their original material with SAMRO.
“There was only one condition to being featured in the campaign,” explains Corder.
“Entrants had to be unheralded artists, without a meaningful public following or a history of having songs playlisted by stations or distributed by labels.”
Once the process was complete, singles would receive airplay on The Hype every Thursday evening, and were considered for possible national airplay across Good Hope FM sister SABC stations across the country.
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This initiative saw Corder nominated for a Radio Innovation Award at the 2016 Liberty Radio Awards.
The more serious side to Dan Corder was highlighted in 2015 when he directed and produced the documentary Luister (‘listen’ in Afrikaans) which investigated and shed light on racism and linguistic academic exclusion at Stellenbosch University. The documentary went viral across South Africa with the hashtag #Luister trending at number one on Twitter for just over three weeks.
This led to the short film being recognised internationally by media platforms such as CNN, the BBC, The Guardian and Al Jazeera. The global media frenzy resulted in Luister literally making the Stellenbosch University leaders listen and take stock of the situation at hand. A subsequent summons to Parliament, and a thorough government investigation, culminated in the university changing their language of instruction policies as well as investigating racism among students.
To date, the documentary has been shown at several international film festivals and was also the focus of an event at Duke University in the USA.
“It was utterly amazing and dumbfounding to all of us that Luister did so well and became a global headline phenomenon. It gave me a faith that I had never had before; that if you created something good enough that the world would respond in a positive way and care for people that had suffered injustice,” explains Corder.
It’s time to immortalise your heritage
Understanding actions speak louder than words, Corder vehemently believes in making himself heard in more ways than one. Dan Corder has partnered with South African History Online (SAHO) and WikiMedia South Africa to save more of South Africa’s history online.
For Heritage Month, he has been asking listeners to identify places, people, historical moments and cultural happenings that matter to them.
“From the suggestions, they have identified those that have not been thoroughly and accessibly documented on the internet. SAHO historians will then collaborate with Wikipedia South Africa editors to create records of these pieces of heritage on Wikipedia and SAHO’s website.
From the beginning of September until Heritage Day on 24 September, they have aimed to create many articles that meaningfully add to the presence of South Africa’s heritage on the internet, so that this heritage will exist for future generations to learn about and know.”
Throughout the month, they have provided updates on the progress being made on the Good Hope FM Breakfast Show and across Corder’s social media platforms, and have emphasised the importance of the work that organisations like SAHO and WikiMedia South Africa do.
Furthermore, they are explaining the different ways that all South Africans can contribute to the immortalising of our heritage.
“So much of the magic of South Africa and its people has not been immortalised online. There is too much heritage and there are too few organisations working to record it. We need to contribute to any and all communities of documenters in every way we can. That includes encouraging South Africans to take control of recording and saving their own heritage,” explains Corder.
One thing can be said about this incredible young talent; there is a lot more where this came from so sit back, relax and watch his star rise in more ways than one.
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