So in typical fashion everything I said I'd review first takes a back seat to a compilation of South African house I recently acquired. If you've got any interest in house music globally, you've probably heard South African DJ Mujava's Kwaito track 'Township Funk', which was released on Warp back in 2008, and got a bit of exposure from Gilles Peterson, amongst others. It got the remix treatment from Skream & Sinden, among others.
original mix
Skream remix
(probably needs a little more bass tbh)
Aesthetically it's not mindblowing. Like Major Lazer's 'Pon de Floor', it's got a basic drum intro, akin to marching-band rolls, but very rhythmic. The marriage of those hypnotic synths over the top is what makes it what it is, ie. a great track to dance to, and ultimately a great step forward for the genre, and its exposure to a broader audience.
A relatively new genre, Kwaito is essentially South Africa's take on house music, with minor influences from disco, hip-hop, and local tribal dance. Slightly slower and often resembling hip-hop, it takes the American house sound of the early to mid 90s and fuses it with African rhythms, chants, and basslines/synth stabs reminiscent of 80s electro. The word comes from the Afrikaans slang kwai, meaning 'hot', or 'kickin'; as in, 'this new shit is fresh' type thang. The emergence of Kwaito is hardly surprising, given the South Africans liberated way of life following apartheid. It represents those freedoms as much as it does the ghetto townships; an increasingly competitive and developing blend of distinctly African dance grooves. Out Here Records, a label focusing on compilations of popular music styles in Africa, brought out this great collection in May of last year: Ayobaness! - The Sound of South African House. It features one track from DJ Mujava, among a dozen other nuggets of S.A. bliss. I've posted a few of my favourites below.
If you're still into paying money for music and listening to it on a proper sound system, you can pick up these jams right here.
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