#blkthought

Qamata Festival

Iphupho L’ka Biko x Sive Mqikela

For God So Loved Us - Selaelo Selota

From a distance, I have been looking at the conversations around the apparent death and/or survival of Kwaito music. The originators of Kwaito in the form of the Trompies, Mdu, B.O.P and others are unwilling to admit to this death. They insist (justifiably so) that the cultural phenomenon that was once (if not still) the ‘soul’ of post-apartheid popular culture can never die, it took new forms as any culture should. They also seem to suggest that Kwaito will subsist as long as there are still townships in South Africa. In other words, as long as the conditions that created it subsist, the music will always be.

 Many are of the view that the (Sowetan) sensibilities we once knew from the sound are no more. The slow-tempo bass and drum accompaniment to the hardcore-joyful-lamenting lyrics of ‘kasi’ (township) living are catching dust in zones of nostalgic frenzy; they say. In public perception (parties and stuff) the music is considered an ‘old school’ moment; a music for reminiscing. No one cares to know what Kwaito song is ‘hot’ at the moment, people seem to be only interested in the classics – Mandoza, Zola, Mdu, Brown Dash, Spikiri etc, except if they hear from the new sounds something similar to the old sound – a verse, a sample, a chorus.

Boundaries have been widened (arguably) and a new breed of ‘Pantsulas’ (Kwaito men and women) has emerged, self-appointed to take up the task to preserve and continue the music. “Kwaito is not dead, it evolved; it is now ‘New Age Kwaito’ bruh”, they say.

 Fair enough.

 In what we could call the ‘golden age’ of Kwaito, this new breed of Pantsulas (new Pantsulas) occupied the category of ‘aboMrapper’ (rappers), a detested group of American wannabes – ‘amakoporosh’. For the ‘golden age Pantsula’, the ‘aboMrapper’ could not fit-in to the quintessential ‘rough and ready’ Panstula image that was demanded from a Kwaito figure. They spoke too much English and gibberish – a sign of weakness and affluence; their ‘swag and slang’ was alien to what was understood by the township at the time (see Mzekezeke, Amakoporosh). The aboMrapper’s image was in contradiction to the Kwaito sensibility that privileged the mastery of marginality of ‘Olova’ and ‘Oguluva’ - the quintessential hustlers.  As the influence of hip-hop grew globally, attitudes towards it changed and aboMrapper gained access to the Kwaito subculture by demonstrating that they too are ‘hardcore’ hustlers fit for the Pantsula label.

 The year is 2018…

 The ‘new Pantsula’ (formerly known as aboMrapper) is trying to convince us that the preservation and continuity of Kwaito will happen by way of ‘sampling’ Kwaito ‘classics’. To the ‘new Pantsula’ sampling seems to be an appropriate model for composing and continuing Kwaito music. I am, however sceptical of the sincerity of this process and I wish to explain why. In popular music cultures like Hip-hop and Kwaito, sampling, as Professor Bheki Peterson asserts, is used as a democratic music-making means to ‘displace previous and sometimes conservative music production methods predicated on the centrality of live musicians’; and thus through this process music-making as a vocation is made available to those who do not necessarily have the opportunities due to lack of resources. As observed by Peterson, sampling could also be viewed as a method to “renew past musical milestones, updating them to make them sound fresh in the present”. In this process, Mariam Sulakian argues that producers and artists “cultivate a realm of musical preservation while embedding their own creativity into the original song’s creative legacy”. Although unannounced, the creative genius is always measured by the degrees in which the new track artistically modifies or supplements the original. Precedence also tells us that the producer samples from a different genre and era (sometimes) which serves two functions: firstly to bring audiences of that other genre to this new music (Kwaito); and secondly, to present the listener of the new music (Kwaito) to the musical worlds traveled by the particular artists/producer to create the new sound. Msawawa’s Bowungakanani and TKZee’s Shibobo, are a case in point.

 My suspicion is that this sampling relationship between ‘the new Pantsula’ and ‘golden age Kwaito’ operates at a very exploitative manner. If we argue that Kwaito is not dead, it took new forms, then we must be willing to regard the ‘golden age Kwaito’ and the new Pantsula Kwaito/New Age Kwaito as contemporaries, operating in one temporality – this spacious present of post-apartheid South Africa. If we agree with this proposition, then we should remember that in Kwaito and hip-hop cultures the ‘sampling’ and ‘chopping’ of your contemporary’s music is considered as ‘biting’ or ‘ukugawula’ (plagiarism) (see Magawula by B.O.P). Therefore, the ‘new Pantsula’ cannot justify their perpetuating the Kwaito sound by the current musical practices they undertake. In their songs and music videos, the ‘new Pantsula’ assembles Kwaito tropes and imagery rhetorically - from lyrics and beat to costume and dance without any display of commitment to the furtherance and variation of the music. This happens in a manner that is intended to manipulate public sentiment by pre-empting the responses that will arise from those who listen to the ’beat’ and remember the cultural value the ‘sound’ of Kwaito once and still occupies. The ‘new Pantsula’ knows very well that no other music has captured the imagination of post-apartheid South Africa in the manner that Kwaito did, and that is why he/she will sample the Kwaito song in such a way that you won’t mistake it for anything else (taking the song as it is). I am not suggesting that the ‘new Pantsula’ is not a participant to the cultures that make up the sound, I am saying that the manner in which the ‘new Pantsula engages Kwaito exploits the cultures that make up the sound without any sign of commitment. For example in his 2017 Stay Shining music video and song, Ricky Rick makes a visual reference to TKZee’s We love this place and Dlala Mapantsula, to such an extent that he couldn’t conceal the borrowed lines and flow from Kabelo Mabalanes’s Pantsula for life. He is not alone; there are many others from Casper Nyovest to Major League and many more.  Although these could be deliberate moves; but do we call Ricky Rick and company creative for reiterating to us, a moment which has not escaped our memory?

 I doubt!

In conclusion, I am of the view that Kwaito music cannot be sustained in the manner that it is happening (sampling the self); possibilities should be extended and explored by the new Pantsula in the same manner that Kwaito emerged in the early 90s. If Kwaito is still alive (at least a healthy life), we should be able to detect it from the current (Panstula) musical practices without the help of these suspicious sampling methods alluded to above. To convince us that they are serious about this continuity and survival of Kwaito, the ‘new Pantsula’ should be able to do a song without any use of a line or verse or a sample from a ‘golden age kwaito’ or house song.

Not all hope is lost though; there are some of the ‘new Pantsula’s’, although not many, who display some commitment to the development of this sound in ways that are not so exploitative. These new Pantsulas have inflected their interventions with more hip-hop influenced approaches – and I think the reason why their sound always works with the people is because it goes back to the source (Kwaito/kasi) – think of Kwesta’s success for example. 

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