Monday, April 03, 2006  

Zola
"Ghetto Scandalous"
Pitch Black Afro with Bravo
"Matofotofo"
Tsotsi
(Milan, 2006)
Buy

Arthur
"Kaffir"
Kwaito: South African Hip-Hop
(Earthworks, 2000)
Buy

Shanty-House
Kwaito, a cousin to house music, is the sound of young South Africa

By Christopher Porter
MARCH 16-23, 2006 | TIME OUT CHICAGO

In April 2004 we were standing in a restaurant in Soweto, the sprawling township near Johannesburg, South Africa, when a deep-house groove started thumping from the speakers. It was a minimalist throb, just bass and drums, but the song kept getting bigger: Bits of piano, percussion and synths stabbed at the edges of the beat, and the track surged like a club cut straight from Chicago or Detroit. As the hypnotic pulse kept building, we felt like the Roxbury guys from Saturday Night Live: heads bobbing, shoulders popping, hips breaking, bodies shaking. The music's power was undeniable, and our creaky, past-dancing-prime bodies began instinctively moving to the rhythm.

But it wasn't until the chanted, African-language vocals came in that we realized the song wasn't from the U.S. or U.K. It was kwaito, the homegrown brand of South African pop music that took that country by storm in the early 1990s.

In the 1980s a music called bubblegum was all the rage in the townships. It was basically disco-fueled synth-pop: equal parts Madonna and mbaqanga, the cyclical, buoyant and danceable style of 1960s and '70s South African township jive music.

Eventually, bubblegum DJs started importing house 12-inches by the likes of Frankie Knuckles, Mr. Fingers and Masters at Work. They blended these European and American club-music bangers with South African melodies and rhythms, adding lyrics that represented the concerns of the country's youth and descriptions of hard-core township life. The rapped words were delivered in a mixture of township slang and South Africa's 11 official languages, including Zulu, Xhosa and English. But the lyrics were never expressed in Afrikaans -- the language of the apartheid government -- except when taking a derogatory word and telling the oppressors where to shove it, as Arthur did on the 1995 kwaito track "Kaffir." (Because of the chanted lyrics, kwaito is sometimes called South African hip-hop, but that's really a genre unto itself.)

Despite it being around for more than 15 years, kwaito is relatively unknown outside of South Africa. That might change with the soundtrack release for Tsotsi, winner of this year's Academy Award for best foreign-language film. While the CD features a few film-score cuts, African R&B like Unathi's "Sghubu Sam" and Vusi Mahlasela's beautiful take on the traditional song "Silang Mabele," the heart and soul of the disc -- and modern South African music -- is kwaito.

Tsotsi means "thug" in the Tsotsi-taal dialect (spoken in much of the film). While the U.S. soundtrack release of Tsotsi on Milan Records is a single disc (in South Africa it's a double), it acts as an easy introduction to the genre. It's one of the few kwaito records available here.

The standout of the soundtrack is Zola (a.k.a. Bonginkosi Dlamini), a superstar in South Africa since his 2000 album Mdlwembe; he takes his stage name from a notoriously violent section of Soweto, and his unrepentant lyrics often reflect the brutality in which he grew up. Tsotsi features nine songs by Zola, including "Ghetto Scandalous," a gangster rap that is one of kwaito's touchstone tunes. Others include Pitch Black Afro's galloping "Matofotofo," featuring a sample from Screamin' Jay Hawkins's "I Put a Spell on You," and Ishmael's "C.R.A.Z.Y.," which borrows from the stop-start structure of American hip-hop but accompanies it with twangy African guitar.

Because kwaito owes so much to house music, it's not a revelatory or revolutionary form; rather it's a fecund tributary of the longtime genre, an evolution developed by South Africans to express life in their newfound democratic but still-troubled era. Mainly, though, kwaito has a good beat and you can always dance to it -- involuntarily or not -- no matter the language you speak.
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Tsotsi is in theaters. The Tsotsi soundtrack is out on Milan Records.
Tsotsi: Trailer
Tsotsi: The Making Of
Tsotsi: Bonus Documentary
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Yes, the headline is lifted from the term coined by Woebot.

Thanks to the Coolfer for pointing out that you can hear samples from the soundtrack here and Zola freestyling (Real Audio).
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Zola's record label
Zola's homepage
Zola music player (allow pop-ups)
Zola interviewed on NPR
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Last but not least, this edition on my blog turned two years old on April 2. I had an earlier blog in 2002 and let it go, but I got fired up again right before I went to South Africa in 2004. Part of the reason for reigniting this site was because I wanted to document my trip; another part of it was because I wanted to join this new revolution called "MP3 blogging," which I found out about through Fluxblog (finally met Matthew at SXSW 2006), Tofu Hut (who I hired to write reviews at America's Jazz Magazine) and Soul Sides (still not met Oliver but it's gotta happen one day; I've met several of his pals). Also, James Morris designed my homepage; he missed out on sharing this site's rabid success (free bacon!) and gigantic financial windfalls (more free bacon!), but he's done kinda OK, too. Propers to y'all. Two years feels like a lifetime in the Land of the Internets.

Posted by CP | Link |

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