Veteran
Kwaito artist Thebe Mogane aka uncle Thebe will rock the Mascom Live Session stage at Botswana Craft on August 30.
FRIEND AND FOE Gatanga Constituency, to Kikuyu benga music, is what New Orleans is to jazz, or what Soweto is to
kwaito.
Kwaito's Promise: Music and the Aesthetics of Freedom in South Africa.
Among them will be Glasgow's Samson Sounds with their uplifting blend of African highlife and blues, dub,
kwaito and jazz, and the whisky-honeyed tones of Cera Impala whose songs are renowned for their beauty and intensity.
His buoyant jump and clean lines were honed at Canada's National Ballet School, but he possesses a charisma that comes from his early years dancing to
kwaito, an energetic style of house music popular in his hometown of Zolani, South Africa.
The Cavern, Mathew Street, Liverpool, 0151 236 1965 - to Tue, 28 Aug DJ Okapi Digging up rare vinyl grooves in the city of gold, DJ Okapi brings a forgotten era of South African pop music back to life, specifically the synth-fuelled '80s disco-funk known as bubblegum and the unique house-inspired
kwaito grooves of the early '90s, connecting them to their contemporaries in other parts of Africa and its diaspora.
From Jazz which was used as the music of resistance, to
Kwaito which spoke for the township youth and now the millennials who are revamping the African music notes by infusing sounds from the past with futuristic sounds of today's time.
This work examines
Kwaito as it has developed alongside the democratization of South Africa over the past two decades.
The music style known as
kwaito combines traditional vocal techniques with Western house music; and was born in the country's mines, where miners used to thud their Wellington boots to communicate with each other.
The music industry as well has undergone similar transitions -- from bubblegum in the '80s to
kwaito of the '90s -- and now the difficult transition to a more sophisticated sound, what some choose to call Afro-jazz or Afro-soul."
Along with hip-hop, house, and African sounds like highlife and
kwaito, reggae and dancehall represent a major thread in the expansive category of African dance rhythms that has come to be known as afrobeats, from the patois-inflected bashment pop of Nigeria's Burna Boy and Timaya, to the quasi-dancehall azonto beats used by Ghanaian artists like Sarkodie.