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Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Information About Amapiano & About The Song "Tshwala Bam", The Latest Amapiano Record That Has Gone Viral In South African & Worldwide


TitoM, premiered Apr 4, 2024

5 comments:

  1. I've spent some time in the last three days watching a number of YouTube videos of "Tshwala Bam" YouTube videos, reading those videos' discussion threads, and reading a few other online articles that I found on that song/video and/or amapiano music in general.

    Here's a few points that I've concluded:
    1. The reason why the song "Tshwala Bam" and other amapiano songs have become viral in South Africa and worldwide is because of their sound and beat and scarcely at all because of their lyrics. This appears to be the case even in South Africa among those who understand the language/s that are being sung in those songs and is especially the case worldwide among those who don't understand those languages.

    Very few people in the discussion threads I read about the "Tshwala Bam" video, sound file, and dance challenges asked about the meaning of that song. That subject didn't appear to be important to those commenters. Instead, the subjects raised in those discussions are the beat, the sound, how people dance/d to that music, and whether or not people outside of South Africa should perform or even dance to amapiano music (i.e. should South Africa gatekeep amapiano music from non-South Africans, and particularly from Nigerians.)

    [to be continued in the next comment]

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    Replies
    1. [continuation of the above comment]

      2. Because "Tshwala Bam" is difficult for people from outside of South Africa to pronounce, I predict that it's likely that that name for this dance will either be changed or won't be remembered even in a short period of time outside of South Africa, and especially not in the United States and other mostly English speaking nations.

      One Tshwala Bam dance challenge that I watched referred to that dance as "the Zombie dance", but that referent for that dance hasn't caught on and rightly so because I don't think that the dance motions really look like how zombies move, and the lyrics to the song don't have anything to do with zombies.

      It also occurs to me that it would be remarkable if any names of South African contemporary dances - or any other African contemporary [or traditional dances] became commonly known in the United States since that hasn't been the case to date. Yes, I know this is our loss, but I think this is the case up to this time.

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    2. Here's the dance challenge video compilation that I came across which referred to "Tshwala Bam" as "the Zombie dance": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M85_vYs3vw "Tshwala Bam Zombie Dance Compilations -| TikTok Viral" published by eHub, Feb 25, 2024

      Here's a comment exchange about the name "Zombie" for this dance from that video's discussion thread (with numbers added for referencing purposes only)
      @EarlyBird792, 2024
      1. "Zombie???? What the hell!!! Who gave it that name?
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      2. @ThatGuy-jr1wr, 2024
      "Bro!!! Like they always want to associate evil with the Yanos."
      -snip-
      Here's a definition for the word "yanos" as it is used in the nation of South Africa:
      https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Yanos
      "Yanos
      Yanos is a shortened word for amapiano, which is a musical genre that originates in South Africa. It is a sub-constituent of house music genre that is characterized by a hybrid of deep house, jazz, and lounge music. It is easily distinguishable by synths, airy pads, and wide basslines.
      Jamming the latest yanos really made our road trip memorable."
      by Guluva November 11, 2020

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    3. In some other pancocojams posts I noted my belief that ,generally speaking, people in the United States weren't and still aren't cosmopolitan, in the sense that we haven't been and still aren't aware of and comfortable with the cultures of other places around the world.

      One of the things that I've noticed time and time again after reading discussion threads of YouTube videos of contemporary African music and dance videos is how aware African commenters from different regions of that continent are of certain songs from other African nations. In some discussion threads people recall growing up with songs from other African nations and singing those songs even if they changed a lot of the lyrics to fit their own languages. And for example, there's lots of comments about a South African song quickly becoming a hit in Kenya and being played on the radio and in nightclubs. The song becomes viral because its beat is so danceable even if people don't know the language that is being sung in that song. Maybe that's because Africans are used to hearing and knowing more than one language.

      In contrast, for the most part, people from the United States (myself included) only know one language-English. And, generally speaking, we are definitely not used to hearing another language being spoken on our streets and in our mass media. As a result, I believe we have to stretch (grow) to become as used to accepting the naturalness of hearing other languages as people from Africa (and some other continents) come to accept just because it is normal to hear those languages. So, as a result, it seems to me that (again generally speaking), we Americans from the United States have to work harder to become more cosmopolitan (accepting and embracing of other cultures).

      I think that the internet has been and continues to be a BIG help regarding this, although we've United Staters have got a long way to go for instance regarding our attitudes toward and embracing of music that isn't sung in English.

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    4. In the United States the internet provides (usually free and easily accessed) opportunities to second hand experience cultures throughout the world. So with regard to contemporary African dances, even if people -in the USA and elsewhere-don't remember the names of specific dances from other nations, we have documentation of those dances so we can read about them, watch them, listen to the music that is performed for those dances, and just enjoy those dances.

      My position is that what is important is that the creators of those dances/music are recognized and honored and receive the monies that they should for their creations. I don't believe that art should be (and can be) restricted to where the art creator's live. I also don't believe that any art can remain "pure" since, even long before the internet, all cultures were blended with other cultures.

      I believe that it's important to document the foundations/origins/beginnings of cultural products. But (as I have noted when it comes to children's recreational rhymes and cheers*), it's important to document the demographics of the earliest examples we can find, how those examples are performed, and the meaning of the words and their movements, and how the rhymes may have changed over time and within specific populations. However, documenting the earliest examples of a specific rhyme doesn't mean that later examples are wrong.

      *I mention children's recreational rhymes & cheers here only because English language children's recreational rhymes and cheers are the area of folklore/cultural expression that I'm most interested in.

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