Vocalist, song writer and producer Kwelagobe ‘Kwela’ Sekele has been shaking up the South African music scene for over a decade. As visionary and vocalist for the Kwani Experience, which took off in the early to mid-2000s, he helped to lay the foundations for an explosive new-generation of Johannesburg bands that built on the legacies…
2016 has been the year of FAKA. The creative duo of Desire Marea and Fela Gucci have outdone themselves and broken cultural ground with every drop and every performance this year. On the 21st of April 2016 they gave an exhilarating live performance that set the Stevenson SEX exhibit alight. While a new video for ISIFUNDO…
The frustrations and brutalities of urban life have often lead artists and musicians to depict cities as Hell. For Percy Shelly, smoky London was the abyss while a century later Bertolt Brecht saw it in sunny Los Angeles. More recently, Hell has been central to Hip Hop. In the 90’s Mobb Deep unleashed Hell on…
We use the word ‘place’ to mean many things. Most obviously, place is location — a space in the world. It may also be a ‘place’ in the social order, as in to ‘know your place’ or ‘be in first place’. In a third sense, place is performance: events ‘take place’. If there is any event…
Earlier this year NASA released declassified files debunking a conspiracy theory which had grown up around the 1969 Apollo 10 mission. According to the legends, astronauts had reported hearing inexplicable sounds as they orbited the dark side of the moon. However, the NASA info revealed a more down to Earth explanation- hearing static from their…
In the 1990s, South Africa experienced the subcultural supernova of Kwaito. Fuelled by post-1994 optimism, and inspired by international hip hop, dancehall and house, local artists created a thriving underground of music, dance and fashion, spread through cassette tapes and taxi sound systems. In almost no time at all, this became the mainstream with the…
Johannesburg has a dark past of violence and exploitation, and even to this day is often presented as an urban dystopia. But the flip side of this is a long history of creativity, resistance, style and flair. In 2016, the city is keeping this legacy alive with exciting and overlapping developments in music, poetry, literature…
This photo-story captures the blissfully imperfect moments of experimentation. The unedited images by Durban-based photo-journalist, writer and artist, Robyn Perros, documents some grit and much grain of one of South Africa’s newest and most diverse ‘afro-futuristic’ music festivals on colour film. The 2016 Zakifo Muzik Festival took place in Durban from 27-29 May 2016 and…
Although painful and brutal, break-ups and other personal crisis are a proven inspiration for creativity. Icons like Bob Dylan and Marvin Gaye made some of their most powerful work in the ruins of imploded marriages. In 2008, Kayne West changed the sound of mainstream music with 808’s and Heartbreak, and also created the template for…
Lex LayFoy recently dropped a powerful, confessional battle-cry against complacency and conformity in the form of Alienation, produced by Sonic Boom SA. It blazes honesty, liberated self-expression through its uncut and unabbreviated lyrics, set to the dirtiest, grimiest trap beat by AHT Gee. The passionate uproar channels Lex LaFoy’s various incarnations, draws from her multiple…
The media coverage of last weekend’s South African Music Awards has been dominated by Riky Rick and AKA’s petulant responses to not winning any awards. Basically, they feel that they were snubbed. Shame. Unfortunately this has overshadowed how another of the night’s winners- Petite Noir’s La Vie Est Belle/Life is Beautiful (which won in the…
Today we drop an exclusive to settle you into the crisp, cold months ahead. Coming out of one of the coolest label in Cape Town, Swishy Delta has all the right co-signs from Damascus to Yes in French… but let the music speak for itself. The 21st century is the age of multi-hyphenates and slashies,…
