By Darren Gilbert

According to Ciolfi, Zula was her ‘in’ to the local music industry.

“While working there, I met Mike Smith, who started Your LMG. He was looking for writers and I said I’d write a review for him.” He eventually got hold of her, asking for the review that she had promised and took a while to deliver. By this time, Ciolfi had gone overseas, but she sent it through anyway and impressed him so much that he asked her to write more.

Once back in South Africa, she started in earnest.

“It was tough, trying to find my way as a writer,” she says. “I would go to all these gigs and I had a very specific, sarcastic tone in my writing.” It wasn’t done intentionally and the point wasn’t to shred the band. After all, the local industry is really small. Chances are good that, as a reviewer, you’re going to see said band at the bar on a Friday and they’ll take you on for something you wrote. Rather, it was an exercise in honesty.

As a result, she gained a reputation as a no nonsense writer. While certainly a good thing, musicians thought that her modus operandi was purely to slate, and she soon realised she need to change this mind set.

“I realised I could do a better service to the bands if I was more objective,” she admits. “So if I really liked something or hated it, I’d say why.” The transition from Your LMG writer to the editor also played its part. “It was a very strange transition because I had to go from writing to editing and critiquing everybody’s work. It was new territory for me. But I’ve had good teachers over the years.”

It was also around this time that she started toying with the idea of starting a blog. Funnily enough, it was the result of a conversation with someone at Zula who complained that they couldn’t get enough of her writing; Your LMG only came out once a month. Ciolfi duly obliged.

However, that didn’t mean the idea of Texx and the City came out fully formed. Truth be told, it didn’t even start out as a music blog.

“When I started in 2010, my first post was about St Patrick’s Day and how I had an Irish friend and how I wanted you to look out for him. It was the most random stuff,” says Ciolfi. Soon enough, though, having many friends who were musicians and working at Zula, it became about music.

Today, six years later, Texx and the City has become a success, growing from a blog into a fully-fledged website with a team of 15. It’s won numerous accolades while Ciolfi herself was named amongst Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans in 2015.

About her own success, she’s straight-forward: “I don’t want to sugar-coat this at all – I work f*cking hard. When people take public holidays and leave, you’ll still find me working. I don’t knock off at the end of the day with a sigh of a relief and a cold drink on the horizon. Instead, I’m working until late at night every day.”

She thanks her family, and specifically her father, for her approach towards work. She says he’s the biggest hustler out there. “He set a really good example of how to really work hard and smart,” she explains. “I was taught not to be afraid to get my hands dirty or to work long hours. And I never have been.”

However, it doesn’t mean she hasn’t had her fair share of challenges. She has tales of people not paying her on time while others have taken advantage of her work ethic. The biggest challenge, though, has been because of her gender.

“It took me a long time to form a good reputation and to be accepted,” admits Ciolfi. “The first time I ever encountered sexism was at a random gig at Zula. People were like ‘What the f*ck are you doing here?’ I was talking to a male musician and I got a weird look and a few snide comments. And I was like ‘Woah, I’m just here to enjoy the music and possibly write a review’. There wasn’t any other reason.”

While this stereotyping bothered her then, today she has no time for it. In fact, mention the word ‘groupie’ to her and she’ll most likely laugh in your face. Ciolfi has more important things on her mind. One of them is to figure out how to turn Texx and the City into a business.

“I was actually thinking about this the other day – people still refer to it as a blog,” she says. “And I’m like ‘sweet, it started out that way. But it’s now a full-fledged website and we’re teetering on the brink of turning it into a business’. I want to monetise it and start paying everybody. Since I don’t have a corporate background, the only way to do that is to consult people who are older and wiser than me.”

Ciolfi has already started the process. Whether she is able to meet her expectations, only time will tell. That she’s doing what she loves makes it easier for her to pursue it. “I consider myself very lucky, being able to merge music and writing – one that I really love and the other that I’m really good at. I don’t think I’ll ever give this up.”

For more information, visit texxandthecity.com. Alternatively, connect with her on Facebook or on Twitter.