AMAPIANO’S SECOND WAVE: HOW KWAITO OPENED THE DOOR FOR AMAPIANO’S EVOLUTIONS (MIXMAG)

“Amapiano is winning all over the gaff,” Marcus Nasty tells me. “But where it came from – the people who really made it – they don’t get enough of a shout out from us.”

In February 2023, I published Crossover and Collectivity: Why London’s house underground is evolving on Mixmag. Shortly after, I received a series of voice notes from the East London UK funky legend. In the recordings, Marcus laughed about disagreements over amapiano in the barbershop. But he also offered some constructive criticism.

“For the sake of fairness, you might do well to dig out the actual South African producers and DJs, because they do feel a bit bitter about this one… Well, they’ve always felt bitter when we take elements of their music, but on this occasion I feel like they’ve had enough!”

Shortly after the messages from Marcus, a DJ and artist called Golden Lady reached out to me. Born in Port Shepstone, South Africa, and now based in East London after moving to the UK as a teenager, she’s connected to the music scenes of the South African diaspora and South Africa’s townships. In a previous interview, she’d mentioned young amapiano producers were being overshadowed by non-South African artists. Those comments had been on my mind since Crossover and Collectivity was published. I’d written about UK artists and collectives who hadn’t been covered before, but in doing so I’d brushed over the people in South Africa who’d inspired them. These young South African artists seemed far from the media spotlight.

As we spoke on the phone in the early evening, Golden Lady passionately described an artist in South Africa sending her beats while sitting in a backroom on an upturned bucket. Another producer, she said, had been borrowing his mother’s teaching laptop to make music. Countless more had lost projects when the grid power went off, shutting down their PCs. These young innovators were producing music in tough circumstances, she told me, and were getting written out of the story of amapiano’s global success. Golden Lady put me in touch with some of the underground producers she’d been talking to. As an outsider, she thought I could write about amapiano from a new perspective.

The first time I heard Njelic SA & Thabza Tee’s ‘Down The Drain’, the track blew me away. It was in September 2022 and I was at the second Ama Fest, a heavily stacked amapiano festival held in a showground about an hour outside London. At least five different DJs played ‘Down The Drain’ (and these were only the sets I caught). Shakers crawled along at 112 BPM, MIDI horns and tense offbeat stabs wound around a triplet bassline, and a fizzing, flanging percussion section orbited a quietly pulsing void where the kick should be. The main hook dropped just after two minutes of tense build-up; a heavily swung, extremely menacing log-sub-kick-drum bassline front and centre in the mix, with flams, trills and hard mid-frequency rolls. Every time the bassline tore through the air, the crowd went crazy, winding up their arms and punching its guttural pattern outwards.

‘Down The Drain’ was different to all the amapiano I’d heard up to that point. I was shocked that something so dark and experimental – with no vocal hook, no uplifting chords, no concessions to pop music arrangement – could be a standout anthem at a UK festival. When I later researched the artists behind it, I started listening to more of Thabza Tee’s productions. Judging from his distinctive sound, he was clearly the main producer behind the track. Njelic SA appeared to have co-signed the release as an already-famous amapiano artist. Thabza Tee’s fingerprints were over more tracks played by DJs in the UK, like ‘Back2School’ by Mellow & Sleazy & DBN Gogo ft. LastBorn Diroba, and ‘Gijima’ by Ulazi. But aside from a Boiler Room performance in his home country, and a smattering of local sets, he wasn’t seeing the international success you’d expect from someone who’d produced one of the most groundbreaking dance music tracks of the year.

After interviewing many of amapiano’s new generation of producers, as well as artists who straddle the line between street-level music scenes and international music industries, it became clear a vast gap was opening up. The upcoming, underground South African artists producing music at home weren’t necessarily the ones seeing financial success and touring abroad. The people I spoke to helped me piece together the genre’s roots in kwaito networks and township struggles. They made apparent the stark inequalities emerging from the genre’s popularity. There’s a rift between internationally famous producers and DJs with busy touring schedules and the township innovators they often overshadow.

This article is the first in a three-part series. In this first part, we’ll delve into amapiano’s origins, its connection to kwaito and the musical environment of townships. In part two, we’ll hear how amapiano’s latest sonic developments take shape in tough material circumstances. Many of its producers share samples, tutorials and techniques to keep the genre growing. South Africa is rightly being recognised as an innovative source of sounds and subgenres that are changing popular music across the world, spinning out new styles at an unparalleled rate. But the stories of amapiano’s much-lauded global rise are obscuring the complexities and distinctions behind the genre’s advancement.

In part three, musicians familiar with South Africa’s broad spectrum of inequalities explain how young producers are vulnerable to exploitation by established artists. We’ll see how this exploitation is compounded by international music industries. We’ll see how digital distribution and streetwise techniques help artists circumvent the usual routes to getting their music out, allowing them to reach worldwide audiences.

In 2019, Kooldrink released ‘Getting Late’ with South African singer Tyla (who recently won a GRAMMY for her performance of ‘Water’). A pop-amapiano crossover recorded with English lyrics, ‘Getting Late’ didn’t reach its full potential until Kooldrink and Tyla recorded a video for it in 2021. The video was released at the perfect moment to capitalise on Kooldrink’s production experience, Tyla’s freshness as an undiscovered voice, and amapiano’s cresting popularity after years of simmering in South Africa.

‘Getting Late’ was many European listeners’ first encounter with amapiano.¹ As Kooldrink puts it, the track was one of the releases that opened the door for South African artists to begin touring internationally. “That started the wave of the bigger amapiano artists that are out there right now,” Kooldrink tells me. This includes many names you’re probably familiar with, like Kabza De Small, Maphorisa, DBN Gogo and Major League DJz.

Now, amapiano is well into its second wave. Producers like Thabza Tee, Ice Beats Slide, Thuto The Human, TheBoyTapes, DrummerRTee924, Jay Music, Sizwe Nineteen, Mcdeez Fboy, Vibekulture SA, City King RSA and many, many more are pioneering subgenres that fall under a broadening amapiano umbrella, like sgija, bique, bacardi and quantum sound, as well as their own individual styles. But younger artists and producers are not necessarily getting the credit, recognition and financial reward they deserve.

Kooldrink candidly tells me he’s not truly part of the South African amapiano culture that spawns these subgenres. Because of the relatively privileged way he and Tyla grew up, Kooldrink explains, they are removed from amapiano’s origins. “An amapiano producer,” Kooldrink says, “is most likely a kid who grew up in a township, listening to kwaito.”

You can’t really understand amapiano’s roots without knowing about kwaito (pronounced “kwy-to” with a short “o” sound). In a simple sense, kwaito is a highly syncopated, slower form of house music that incorporates South African languages and percussion sounds. But kwaito is also understood as an embodiment of the post-apartheid era. It’s not just a national variant of house music, it’s a unique cultural form shaped by the structure of townships and Black South African experience. This is what amapiano arises from.

In his book Kwaito’s Promise, Gavin Steingo details the origins of kwaito in apartheid South Africa. In an effort to convince the world and itself that Black South Africans were “simple, rural, tribal people,” the government tried to stop Black South Africans from hearing music from overseas. While the government blocked international radio frequencies, the South African Broadcasting Company (SABC), would only play music that fit its definitions of “tribal” styles related to regional ethnic groups.

Before the end of apartheid in 1994, to hear inaccessible international music, Steingo writes, “was to hear beyond apartheid and thus to hear freedom”. When international electronic music first slipped through the regime’s sonic embargo, it was experienced as “a spatial outside signalling a future beyond the present of apartheid segregation and international isolation”. House music in the 1980s, produced by Black people in the US and almost impossible to access in apartheid SA, embodied this otherworldly, futuristic freedom and became intensely popular when it reached townships.

According to Ganyani Tshabalala, known in townships as “the godfather of house music” for distributing these inaccessible sounds, Black South Africans referred to house interchangeably as “international music” or “kwaito”. But in the post-apartheid era, South African-produced kwaito evolved into its own distinct sound, opening the door to a homegrown electronic music culture. “The international house music that was played was in English, or it was instrumental,” Golden Lady tells me of the music she remembers from her childhood in the 1990s, “so it was difficult for us to have access to it. But then kwaito came along and had this house beat, a slow beat. It had the kicks and the drums, and it had a language that we could understand.”

“That’s where it changed the game. It was a music we could relate to. It told our story. Even the youngest kids were singing it, because everyone could speak the language and could understand what they were singing about. Even now, most amapiano tracks are kwaito remixes or have a touch of that old school sound.”

As amapiano has become popular abroad, the speed that DJs outside South Africa have played it has become a point of controversy. UK DJs in particular are charged with pushing the tempo too high. This isn’t only about changing the sounds or losing details, it extends into the very meaning of experiencing music at a slower tempo, which is part of kwaito’s history in South Africa.

As Steingo notes, early kwaito music hovered around 100 BPM. One of his sources describes how, in Soweto, the faster tempos of imported music like UK garage were associated with so-called “white” music like rock. To slow them down, DJs played 45rpm records at 33rpm, resulting in tempos around 95 BPM that audiences preferred. In the debate around the tempo of amapiano, as it is pushed from around 110 BPM up towards 120 BPM by international DJs, you will hear a common South African dance music adage repeated: “the aim is not to sweat”.

How could the aim of dance music be not to sweat? Firstly, kwaito, house and amapiano aren’t only listened to as dance music in South Africa. You’ll hear amapiano and house playing out on the street, in cars, at home, and pumped through airport speakers. Amapiano subgenres like private school and sgija are listened to when you’re chilling at home as much as in the club.

When people are dancing to amapiano, it’s often in subtle, expressive ways. They communicate a sense of rhythm without strenuous movements; watch videos on TikTok and you’ll notice how much is done with the eyes, mouth and facial expressions alone. TOSS, an artist who went viral dancing topless through township streets, flicks his hips from side-to-side with the accuracy of a metronome. Amapiano dances are filled with deceptively difficult, precise moves like these.

“We say the aim is not to sweat because if you’re sweating sweating, you’re not really in the feels,” Golden Lady says. For her, slower tempos are linked with experiencing the narrative of the music. “When the rhythm is slow, when you’re taking in the music as is – that’s when you get to receive the message, you get to hear each element of the song, you get to feel the soul in the song. That’s how South Africans listen to music: we want to have that experience of soul. People feel strongly that the music must have a story.”

D’Athiz (pronounced “Dee-ar-tiz”) is a 25-year-old producer born in Durban but living in Johannesburg. With his cousins Ke-nny and Locomeister, he produces some of the darkest and most raucous amapiano out there, which is intensely popular with DJs across Europe because of its focus on bass. D’Athiz tells me he grew up in “a house environment”. “My uncles loved house music and kwaito,” he says. “They were listening to Big Nuz, DJ Cleo, Professor, Oskido… that’s where my love for house music came from.” But rather than house, his sound is more closely inspired by gqom, a genre born in the townships of Durban that remains underground compared to amapiano’s nationwide success. He describes how the gqom samples he uses in his amapiano tracks were recorded in his high school days.

“Gqom was a storytelling thing, you see? Every time the school term ended we used to party. We used to call it ‘pens down’ – school is done for now. We would make gqoms to introduce that moment.” Fizzing with energy while recollecting the memories, D’Athiz tells me how they would celebrate. “We used to groove in a taxi – do you know a Quantum taxi, the Toyota? We used to have like 20, 25, 30 people in a taxi. The driver must make sure that his taxi has lots of bass speakers, so you can feel it more. Before that begins, there must be a song that introduces the moment – like ‘now it’s time to party, school is finished.’”

There is a continuum of themes and vibes running from kwaito culture into gqom and amapiano. Even if you’re sweating to bass-heavy gqom in a taxi crammed with people, you’re still experiencing the music’s storytelling. This is what amapiano continues, with tracks that are slow to unfold and created with 64 bar intros both for DJ blends and the anticipation they create in home-listening. DJs at township clubs let songs breathe rather than chopping straight into the main section. “Because we come from a kwaito background, a house music background, we love the build-up of tracks,” Golden Lady says.

The storytelling and anticipation that are key in kwaito and gqom extend into music on the harder side of amapiano. On D’Athiz’s latest collaborative EP with Ke-nny and Locomeister, ‘What’s the Sound?’, the trio introduce growling basslines in the build-up, but always save the main log drum riff for around the two minute mark, constantly varying and intensifying it thereafter. Similarly, Nandipha808’s trailblazing ‘Top Boy’ EP blows out the mix with his distorted log drums. In each track the log drum is always the show stopping moment, but he never rushes to get there, weaving gentle, soulful chord progressions together before suddenly flipping tables with legato basslines pinging off each other.

The taxi or “transport” is an integral part of Black South African electronic music culture. Kwaito was first distributed through homemade tapes sold at taxi ranks by Ganyani Tshabalala and his associates. Taxis are how international house music became accessible during apartheid, and their importance runs through township music cultures from kwaito into gqom and amapiano. It’s similar to the legacy of pirate radio in Black British dance music from jungle to garage and grime. Artists like D’Athiz had their formative musical experiences in taxis, and Golden Lady describes how the sound “taxi gqom,” which she listened to with friends on their way to school, has now been re-edited into the amapiano subgenre “quantum sound” by artists like RealShaunMusiq, Sizwe Nineteen, Nandipha808 and more.

“Soweto, and South Africa as a whole, is very music-based. Just hearing deep house or kwaito from a guy driving past you… it did a lot,” JayMea tells me. He describes his hometown, Soweto, as “very vibrant, very loud… it’s a whole musical environment”. Taxis and cars driving past, street vendors with hi-fis blaring, kids cycling around with bluetooth speakers – all of these contribute towards kwaito and house music being the musical air producers breathe in a township. “Deep house used to be big here in SA, before amapiano took over. So I think deep house influenced me. Kwaito as well, I used to hear a lot of kwaito, and I still do. Those sounds did inspire me, but I didn’t go out and specifically listen to them. I think just hearing them while doing everyday things really did help.”

Younger artists depart from their kwaito predecessors by drawing on different influences. Gqom, EDM and trap provide the musical blueprint for their early productions, rather than international house music. One of the youngest producers I spoke to, the 17-year-old JayMea is a gamer. “When I was younger, I was looking for a Minecraft mod,” JayMea explains as we chat just after one of his high school exams. “I came across a Tomorrowland advert and Skrillex was on there. So then I clicked on the ad, I looked for more information, and I was really intrigued by Skrillex, the way he could make and manipulate sounds. Then I started googling the basics of how to make music, what software you needed to make music, all that kind of stuff, when I was nine.”

As well as Skrillex, JayMea name-checks Dutch EDM producers like Mesto and Mike Williams. One of JayMea’s favourite contemporary amapiano producers is Vigro Deep, who fuses the melodrama and progressive melodies of EDM with the rhythmic complexities and subtleties of amapiano. JayMea’s latest releases, like ‘Ungowami’, ‘This One For You’ and ‘Hold My Hands’, take on the reverb-drenched vocals and catchy toplines of EDM, combining them with the driving, disco-like rhythm sections of tropical house and Vigro Deep-esque basslines.

You can hear the influences of trap artists like Migos, 2Chainz, Future, DJ Mustard and Metro Boomin’ in the simple but satisfying melodic sensibilities of the latest amapiano, as well as loud, compressed bass as the focal point of the mix. “When piano started,” Kiddyondebeat tells me, “most producers were not comfortable making their own sound. But now, as it grows, most are tapping out of that comfort zone.” Jay Music calls his sound “Deep Groove,” Real Nox calls his music “Theke,” Inter B & Draad are pioneering an Afrotech-infused style they call “Sgafro” and, at least for now, JayMea says he makes “EDM-piano”.

Amapiano has entered a moment where nearly every new artist seems to be embarking on a fresh hybridization of the sound, extending the soul and storytelling of kwaito and Black South African music culture into novel sonic arrangements. Technology, music and the means to make it are shared among producers and artists to keep the genre and culture alive. But hard stops and tough material conditions put in sharp relief the inequalities between producers working in South Africa and those working abroad. In the second part of this three part series, we’ll hear more about how amapiano takes shape in townships, places of music but also of limited opportunity.

Jake Colvin, AKA NKC, is a writer, DJ, producer and founder of the Even The Strong label, follow him on Instagram