If Amapiano be the Tune of an Era, Dance On!

Thanks to a teething but hyped-about subgenre of music blandly known as Amapiano it dawned on me recently just how ignorant I’ve been. How artistically the world has progressed and I’ve seemingly remained behind; an outdated relic who missed the bus into this flagrant new age. 

All these decades music had occupied the more endearing crannies of my recesses. To every worthwhile occasion a song. Hymns at baptism, a lullaby at creche, morbid songs to sad experiences, like a religion, devoutly I have communed with the gods of drum and string. 

But never with Amapiano. 

Growing up in the 90s, we read from a different scripture. And I was certain I had all the parables figured out. 

These were the early freedom years. FW de Klerk had just called for the release of all political prisoners and economic sanctions were lifted on South Africa. No longer were we the forlorn skunk of globalisation, and soon enough western commercialism came tsunaming at our borders. With it, it brought that mesmerising soft power otherwise known as pop culture. Gangsta Rap for one; – The Notorious B.I.G., Tupac, Onyx – tough-looking guys with baggy denims sagging way below the beltline rapping about drugs, women and drive-by shootings like they actually knew what they were going on about. Profane, misogynistic lyrics that payed scant regard to political correctness and observed no sacred cows.

It was raw. It was radical. And we had a defining word: Underground! The vulgar the content, the more underground we thought it was, especially when it was so crass as to be unplayable on radio. That there was a thing called punk seething with defiant angst on the white side of the tracks didn’t help our cause either, only emboldened it. 

Such music of the counterculture was a befitting soundtrack to the times, given that we were the guinea pigs of the large-scale Rainbow Nation experiment. Multiracial kids hurled into the melting pot of intergrated education. 

We bore witness to the surrendered last thrashes as the punk scene staggered and fell away; felt the contractions as grunge was born and lived through a multiculturalism that allowed one to seamlessly hop between Da Brat, The Clash, Chiskop, REM, Metallica… Rap, punk, kwaito, pop and heavy metal all playing on the same tape recorder – we were blessed.

At least so we thought. 

In all that overwhelming sense of purpose, though, we missed the bigger lessons that came in the sleeves of the cassettes. Too self-preocuppied with ourselves to know and embrace that music struck chords beyond the pleasures of song and dance. In every sound, lies a story of the times. A small history of a generation.

We were too naïve to realize that before us were our fathers with township pop, jazz, disco and all those cultural songs that were reinvigorated with funk and Motown to flourish into eternal dancefloor evergreens. There was Dan Tshanda, Mpharanyana, bell bottoms, perms, pantsula, penny-whistles and all the hordes of township bohemians who learnt to play by ear yet could stand tall against anyone the world had to offer. On hearing the late Bra Hugh Masekela singing, the legendary guitarist, Eric Clapton, is said to have listlessly murmured something to the effect that he wished he could sing like that too.

Anyway, in dimly-lit shebeens sat the high-minded political comrades who tended – presumably to avoid elements of tribalism and find a common umbrella under which to shape the Liberation Movement into “a broad church” – to lean more towards jazz and in Dollar Brand (aka Abdullah Ibrahim) and the new idea of township jazz they found a man whose music was something congruent with such intent. It was not Miles Davis or Coltrane nor was it the blues of the Deep South, or the bluegrass of the hick worker. It was considerably stripped of those specifications – the raging lunacy of Gillespie gone – and broken down to the shuffle and street wisdom of the everyday urban hustler and kitchenmaid. 

With Amapiano, a different generation casts its eyes on the soaring crest of a wave that speaks to the swoosh of a new tide. A sound that has captivated the world’s imagination so much so that the who’s who of Hollywood have their eyes straining to hear what’s happening in South Africa. Diddy, Alicia Keys, Swizz Beatz, Usher and Ludacris, all vibing to a sound straight outta SA.

As with any unfamiliar genre, Amapiano’s beginnings are humble but the hovering depth of something profound is undeniable. Unsurprising therefore that it transcends beyond the cramped backrooms, abject poverty and half-broken laptops of the townships in which it was created. As barefoot music connoisseurs, eParkeni had to pore over the literature and videos to seek out the names and pry open the Amapiano anthology. 

Early beginnings

No one can say exactly what year it began and there is serious contention as to the place and the pioneers behind it. Most guesses say in the mid-2010s and that the likes of Dj Stokie were the innovators. At its conception, radio stations flat-out dismissed it as being of poor quality, club DJs had misgivings, and the public simply stuck with what was already out there. Enter Da Kruk, a popular Dj on Joburg’s youth station, Yfm. Through the Amapiano Hour on his slot, he encouraged producers to send through their mixes, even sparing a couple hundred Rands to have some of them traveling up to Joburg to mix live on air. 

The breakthrough

Listener calls asking what this music is, start coming in; the organic marketer that is word-of-mouth works its magic. The veil of mystery is lifted off the personas non grata as they slowly emerge from obscurity, land big club gigs and soon find an entire hour on LiveAmp, the SABC’s flagship music show, entirely dedicated to the craft. Filmmakers seek these guys out in the townships. Pundits rack their brains for terminology to describe this new sound. “National treasure,” some say, “a lifestyle,” “black success,” which might not square well with a certain Mr Cee. His song Wie se kind is die enjoys upward of a million views on YouTube, he’s signed an international record deal, and…he’s Afrikaans.

Pretty soon Amapiano lands on BBC Radio 1 and one host, Dj Edu, finds himself listening to something remarkable; “they flipped it,” he says, “and made the drum the bass and the bass the drum.”

Phumlani Magudu, a familiar face in the Colesberg deejaying scene notes another key ingredient: the log drum, described on This is Amapiano, a BBC News Africa documentary, as “a raw bassline with a heavy kick-drum effect.” “The log drum,” says producer and Dj Felo Le Tee, “needs to be balanced but at the same time you need to add a sub-bass underneath to give it that…(thrusts his elbow at the air).” 

Broadcaster Jeremiah Asiamah was introduced to Amapiano through the viral John Vuligate song. “The bassline,” he says with perceptible excitement, “you can’t really describe it until you hear it.” On that day he’d immediately stopped what he was doing and cranked up the volume. His verdict; “these lot are onto something big!”

Social Media

More than anything, Amapiano is an ecosystem roping in music, dance and social influencing into the fold. Uncle Waffles, in person actually a woman with the striking features of a Vanity Fair model, has made a name for herself through her acrobatic dance moves, deejaying and taking the genre to the globe. Easily the biggest artist in the world today, Drake, follows her on Instagram. 

Another hot and happening figure is that of Dbn Gogo whose dance challenges, she says, “are a different life form to Amapiano. They are the things that actually make songs move before they’ve even dropped.” The genre often incorporates mimicked animalistic noises, whistles and at least one American YouTuber is blown away by how South Africans are able to turn something as mundane as a sneeze into a massive dance challenge.

There are individuals like Kamo Mphela the queen of the dance floor and innovator of the baleka, a dance move which takes its cue from The Moonwalk and is all the rage in the streets.

You will have noticed a pattern here: social media marketing is the game-changer. Rapper Young Stunna’s Amapiano song, Adiwele, became an overnight sensation just from him sharing a single live video. He had not even officially released the track. On music streaming platforms the genre draws billions of views and there’s Amafest, an annual Amapiano festival that takes place in South London. As such, the likes of DJ Maphorisa, Kabza de Small and Dbn Gogo have been thrust into superstardom and enjoy cult status amongst the Yanos – as the fans of the genre like to be known.

But there is a pressing question on eParkeni’s mind around a certain DJ Black Coffee. He doesn’t really do Amapiano. In fact his sound brims with techno, drum and bass and synthesizers reminiscent of 90s dance music. In his native South Africa he’s big but in the rest of the globe, he’s huge. Our DJ Phumlani Magudu tells us that it’s because he understands his audience. That to be a good DJ is not so much determined by having an ear for music or being a good mixer, you must understand the audience you are playing for. Come October, Black Coffee will be showcasing his abilities at the colosseum of greatness, Madison Square Garden. Let that sink in. The Garden, bru.

As for Amapiano, nobody can say where the wave is headed but it would seem that everybody would wish to be aboard when it gets there. Unlike the predecessors these guys don’t appear to harbour many of the political and social hang-ups that preoccupied the sounds of yesteryear. In its bare essentials, it is happy music, dance music, it’s a sound that speaks to a story of a generation, a generation that is beautifully growing into itself.