Focalistic does not forget faces.
At least that is what I have come to understand through the interviews, quick encounters and various run-ins we have had over the years. Some artists greet you like they are meeting you again for the first time. Foca usually picks up where you left off.
So when I walk into the adidas store at Sandton City for the launch of the FocaForum 2000, he spots me through the crowd and comes over.
“This is crazy,” he says.
He looks around the store, almost as if he is still taking it all in. And, to be fair, it is.
The FocaForum 2000 makes Focalistic the first African musician to collaborate with adidas South Africa, a significant milestone in itself. But look closer and the more interesting story is what he has actually done with the opportunity.
There is a map of Ga-Rankuwa inside the shoe. References to the Union Buildings and Straata Nation run through the design, while the accompanying clothing incorporates the street map of his hometown. Focalistic was involved throughout the creative process, from the design to how the story around the shoe would be told.
He has spent most of his career telling us that Pitori can travel.
Now you can wear it.
“‘Pitori to the world’ has always been about exporting our culture and showing where we come from,” he says. “The FocaForum 2000 is an extension of that vision, something people can physically experience. It’s about taking something personal and turning it into something the world can hold.”
That has always been central to Focalistic’s appeal.
Pitori Maradona. President Ya Straata. Straata Nation. Ga-Rankuwa. Even as the rooms have grown and the music has travelled further, Pretoria has never become a piece of his backstory that gets mentioned only when somebody asks where he is from. It remains the language of the whole thing.
“I want people to feel luxury in where they come from, and know that their story is valid,” he says. There is something in that line that gets to the heart of the collaboration.
For a long time, aspiration was presented to young South Africans as something that existed somewhere else. The important city was somewhere else. The expensive thing came from somewhere else. Success often seemed to mean getting far enough away from where you started.
Focalistic has spent years arguing the opposite.
Pitori was never something he needed to leave behind before the rest of the world could take him seriously. It was the reason the story became interesting in the first place.
There is something satisfying, then, about seeing a map of Ga-Rankuwa sitting inside a R2,499 adidas sneaker on a shelf in Sandton City.
