mama dance production music team

The owners

Craig McGahey

Founding Partner

As an 80’s South African teenager recording top 40 Radio charts onto a cassette recorder, through to a UCT student more interested in playing in bands than studying maths, Craig has walked a long path with African music. He has been a radio music programmer, recording studio owner, record label owner, executive producer, music supervisor and music publisher.

This all-consuming passion for local African sounds, and the people that make them, finally resulted in the formation of the Mama Dance Music Library. And to calm his nerves, he still plays guitar every day and is always hunting fresh African music for his DJ sets.

Dale Blignaut

Since 2009

Dale graduated from the University of Cape Town with a Bachelor of Business Science in 2003.  After working in the book publishing industry he moved to music publishing.  He has led many aspects of Mama Dance from producing albums and leading the marketing team to creating the accounting system, and managing royalty distributions.  His strategic thinking has allowed Mama Dance to remain ahead of the competition. He has acted as music supervisor on a number of well-known films including Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, & Shepherds and Butchers, along with numerous ads over the years.

Jeff Moffatt

Since 2011

Jeff joined Mama Dance in 2011 after working abroad in London and Sydney in IT and Higher Education for numerous years. His background in music and recording has meant that he’s played a crucial role in developing and curating the library and he now heads up the “Albums in Production” department. Jeff’s incredible work ethic, deep grasp of music composition and production quality as well as his long running relationships with our composers make him an invaluable part of the team. He takes all our albums to the finish line.

The team

Louise Bulley

Licensing & Royalties Administrator

She has a wealth of experience as she started in the music industry in 2004.  Lou has in-depth knowledge of CMO’s as she worked for both NORM (now CAPASSO) and SAMRO. She then went into independent music publishing for the next 15 years including, most recently, her time at Mama Dance.  Louise has recently been elected as a non-executive director to the SAMRO board. She’s also chairperson  of Production Music SA and a long running MPASA board member.

Ocasia Booysen

Admin and marketing assistant

He is an accounting graduate with plenty of marketing

experience. He’s our BMAT expert, handles CMO registrations, notifications and international catalogue data, together with various marketing and social media tasks. Outside of his time at Mama Dance,

he manages and plays the Bass guitar in an up-and- coming reggae band called Conquerors Reggae Band.

Ashwin Smith

Production

Ashwin is a music school graduate who works in our album production department where he oversees various album projects, does an amazing job at track and album descriptions as well as handling all playlist curation and management. He handles most of our daily music searches.

He’s also proved himself a social media content whizz kid and manages important relationships with Adrev and the digital media companies such as Tik Tok, Youtube etc…

Lindy Taoushiani

Marketing Director

With a psychology degree and teaching diploma Lindy somehow ended up in advertising – and has been a Director at Artifact Advertising for over 20 years. For four years she served as Marketing Director at Taste Holdings overseeing a portfolio of QSR brands and the launch of Starbucks into South Africa.

With hands-on experience in all aspects of advertising and marketing she has joined the Mama Dance team to help further elevate the brand focusing on a fresh look and feel for 2024, radically increasing social media engagements and content, a website refresh and our launch into East Africa. Her positive and inspiring personality, together with a work ethic second to none has already had a dramatic impact on our performance in many areas of the business.

Wambui Kinyua

Kenya and East Africa Representative

As an experienced entertainment professional in Kenya with 9 years of industry expertise, Wambui joined Mama Dance eager to further develop her skills and experience in the music industry. She is opening doors for us in East Africa, exposing Mama Dance to new African markets – new music, new composers and new clients across the continent.

Driven by a profound love and passion for her work and people, Wambui is our force on the ground in Kenya and East Africa, expanding awareness of Mama Dance through networking, marketing and artist outreach.