Kwaito
| Kwaito | |
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| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Late 1980s, South Africa |
| Typical instruments | |
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Kwaito is a music genre that emerged in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the 1990s. It is a variant of house music featuring the use of African sounds and samples. Typically at a slower tempo range than other styles of house music, Kwaito often contains catchy melodic and percussive loop samples, deep bass lines, and vocals. Although bearing similarities to hip hop music, a distinctive feature of Kwaito is the manner in which the lyrics are sung, rapped and shouted. American producer Diplo has described Kwaito as "slowed-down garage music," most popular among the black youth of South Africa.
The word kwaito is an Isicamtho term from the Gauteng townships and encompasses styles that range from guz, d'gong, and isgubhu to swaito. The word originates from the Afrikaans kwaai, which used as a slang term is the equivalent of the English term hot. Kwaito led a post-Apartheid township subculture into the mainstream. Despite the fact that the Afrikaans language is associated with the apartheid regime and racial oppression, Afrikaans words are often drawn into the Isicamtho vocabulary, reshaped and used in a related or new context. M'du Masilela, a pioneering Kwaito artist, said, "When house music got popular, people from the ghetto called it Kwaito after the Afrikaans slang word kwai [sic], meaning those house tracks were hot, that they were kicking." Another Isicamtho word derived from the Afrikaans word kwaai is amakwaitosi, which means gangster. The popular Kwaito artist and producer Arthur Mafokate describes the relationship between Kwaito and gangsterism as music revolving around ghetto life.
In the backdrop of a transforming South Africa, Kwaito took shape in the township Soweto at the same time Nelson Mandela took office as the first democratically elected president of South Africa. The removal of the political and economic sanctions greatly transformed the South African music industry.
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