Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post provides information about South Africa's Gqom music and Amapiano music genres.
The content of this post is presented for cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
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Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/05/youtube-video-pitoris-amapiano-vs_20.html for this closely related pancocojams post entitled "YouTube Video "Pitori's Amapiano vs Durban Gqom Dance" (with selected comments from this video's discussion thread)".
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GQOM MUSIC
Excerpt #1:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gqom
"Gqom ... is a genre of electronic dance music that emerged in the early 2010s from Durban, South Africa,[1] pioneered largely by producer DJ Lag[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], duo Rudeboyz[2][11][12][13], Emo Kid and Dominowe[14] developed out of South African house music, kwaito and techno.[15] Unlike other South African electronic music, gqom is typified by minimal, raw and repetitive sound with heavy bass beats but without the four-on-the-floor rhythm pattern.[1]
[...]
Name and characteristics
The word gqom derives from an onomatopoeic combination of click consonants in the isiZulu and isiXhosa meaning a hitting drum. It is also expressed as qgom, igqom, gqomu or variants thereof.[18][19]
Gqom is known for its beats which have a minimal, raw and repetitive sound with heavy bass. It is mainly described as having a dark and hypnotic club sound. The style of beats does not use the four-on-the-flour rhythm pattern which is often heard in other house music.[1] … It often uses one phrase or a few lines which are repeated numerous times in the song. …
Dance moves
Gqom music is associated with a number of distinctive dance moves, including gwara gwara, vosho and bhenga.[22]
Gwara gwara
Gwara gwara is performed by rolling and swinging the arm and the elbow in terms of making a circle, and one of the leg moves in connection with the arm's rhythm. It has some similarities to the Stanky Leg.[23] The dance move created by disc jockey and producer DJ Bongz, was heavily imitated by South Africans and other African people mainly during 2016.[24][25] It also received widespread globally as the choreography was adopted by notable musicians: Rihanna performed the dance move while performing Wild Thoughts at the 60th Annual Grammy Awards in 2018. Childish Gambino performed the dance in the video of his song "This Is America".[26][27]
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Excerpt #2
From http://www.factmag.com/2016/01/05/gqom-feature/ "Gqom: A deeper look at South Africa’s new generation of house" BY BEN MURPHY, JAN 5 2016
...“In Africa, electronic music is bubbling. Across the vast continent, fresh machine-generated sounds are popping off, sometimes drawing on outside influences, sometimes made within their own creative bubble. In Egypt, electro chaabi, the computerized update of urban folk music, recently caught the ear of Kode9 and other forward-thinking UK DJs. Afrobeats, with its hip-hop leaning, accessible 4/4 vibe, has travelled beyond its origins in Nigeria and Ghana to grow in the UK and beyond, whilst in South Africa, house and its many regional variants like kwaito have been popular for a long time. Its most visible house artist, Black Coffee, is a superstar at home and popular worldwide.
Of all these exciting, recently unfolding forms, gqom could be the most outlandish. Emerging mostly from the townships of Durban, South Africa’s second most populous city, gqom is a raw dance music blueprint with a polyrhythmic bustle – part broken beat, part chrome-plated synth menace. Skeletal, robotic, unsettling and irresistible, it sounds somewhat influenced by UK sounds like grime and funky, but has nothing to do with them, says gqom producer Citizen Boy, part of the Mafia Boyz collective.
"I think the style was invented when some unknown guy from elokishini, the ghetto, got hold of production software and began experimenting and making something he could dance to, and gqom was born,” says (brilliantly named) producer Emo Kid, but some reckon that it mutated from other previously existing styles. Gqom shares some similarities with the local house sound, despite its non-4/4 pattern, and it’s often blended at house parties by DJs playing a mix of gqom, sgubhu and hip-hop.
“I think I heard about gqom music in 2012,” says Citizen Boy, who believes the style comes from “an old genre called Sgxumseni, which means ‘make us jump’.” He adds: “DJ Clock and DJ Gukwa used to produce it, then after a while Naked Boyz arose and they took the spot like it’s the genre gqom. It’s almost the same as gqom, but the difference is that Sgxumseni is a four-step and gqom is a broken beat — it can be a three-step or two-step beat.”
“Gqom music relates a lot to house music but it is also slightly different from house music, it is very tribal and the kick drum has an unfamiliar pattern,” adds Emo Kid. “It is very easy to identify a gqom sound because it is unique.”...
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Excerpt #3
Note: This quote is included in https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2020/05/south-african-rappersinger-sho-madjozi.html [with italics added to highlight that sentence]
From https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/arts/music/sho-madjozi.html Sho Madjozi’s Mixed Up, Pan-African Rap
..."[Sho Madjozi's] lyrics mix it up, too. She mostly raps in a combination of Xitsonga, the language of the Tsonga people, and English. Her bubblegum-bright party track “Huku” is in Swahili, a language Madjozi learned to speak fluently in Tanzania.
Madjozi’s music features multilingual rap flows — in Xitsonga, Swahili and English — over beats from a style of house music called gqom.[photo caption]
These multilingual flows unfold over a style of music known as gqom, a shadowy strain of house that began bubbling out of townships in Durban, South Africa, in the early 2010s.
To untutored ears, gqom can sound gritty, with its apocalyptic sirens and ribcage-rattling bass. In Europe and the United States, Madjozi said, the style is often “perceived as being alternative or experimental.” But in South Africa, she added, “Gqom is the biggest sound. Gqom is the pop of South Africa.”
Recently, American hip-hop heavyweights seem to have recognized gqom’s combination of rough-hewed authenticity and commercial potential. Kendrick Lamar’s soundtrack for the superhero movie “Black Panther” features gqom beats, and Beyoncé’s new “Lion King” album brings in South African gqom musicians on the track “My Power.”
Madjozi hasn’t had her Hollywood moment yet, but her songs are among gqom’s most accessible examples. On her debut album “Limpopo Champions League,” released in December 2018, she put the genre’s beats into a typical “verse, chorus, verse,” pop song structure, she said."...
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Sho Madjozi's 2019 viral song "John Cena", rapped/sung in Kiswahili and English (with a few South African words) also features gqom beats.
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AMAPIANO MUSIC
Excerpt #1
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amapiano
Amapiano is a style of house music that emerged in South Africa in 2016. Amapiano is a sophisticated hybrid of deep house, jazz and lounge music characterized by synths, airy pads and wide basslines.[1] It is distinguished by high pitched piano melodies, Kwaito basslines, low tempo 90s South African house rhythms and percussions from another local subgenre of house known as Bacardi.[2]
Origins
Although it is known the genre gained popularity in Gauteng, there is a lot of ambiguity in terms of where the Amapiano style of music originates, with various accounts of the musical style in Johannesburg townships, Soweto, Alexandra, Vosloorus and Katlehong where it is most common. Because of the genre's similarities with Barcadi, some people assert the genre began in the Pretoria area with DJ Mojava which was made popular by Pretoria taxi drivers and has been an on going debate about the origin of Amapiano.[3][4][5]
Various accounts as to who formed the popular genre make it impossible to accurately pinpoint its origins.[6]
Popularity
Initially, Amapiano[7] was a confined success in the townships, playing in popular pubs and taverns around Gauteng. The sound itself was underground music, being shared around using messaging apps, more commonly WhatsApp, before it became mainstream being recognised by streaming services such as Deezer, Spotify, Apple Music. The genre was further popularised by DJs who would transform popular music hits and incorporating the jazzy low-tempo into those tracks, including DJ Ganyani, Sun-El Musician, DJ Maphorisa and Kabza De Small.[8]
As of 2020, Amapiano is getting more mainstream across Africa; there are several dedicated charts now, more playlists on digital platforms, not just by South Africans alone.[9][10][11]
The sound is filled with some melodious piano tunes, coupled with a "gong-gong" sound, making it up to what is called "Amapiano". Some DJs and producers do mix it up with Gqom.
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Stylistic origins: Deep house, kwaito, jazz, lounge
Cultural origins: Mid-2010s, Gauteng, South Africa
Typical instruments: Piano, drums, synthesizer
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Except #2:
From https://newsroom.spotify.com/2019-10-02/charting-the-meteoric-rise-of-south-africas-amapiano/ Charting the Meteoric Rise of South Africa’s AmaPiano
OCTOBER 2, 2019
During the early days of its popularity in 2016, AmaPiano, the uniquely South African take on house music, circulated via low-quality file shares on messaging apps and online forums. Developed by bedroom producers with limited resources, the music spread from phone to phone faster than anyone expected; by early 2019, you couldn’t walk through the streets of South Africa without hearing AmaPiano’s sunny melodies seeping into the air from car windows and phone speakers
“If you put one hundred guys in a room and you asked them where [AmaPiano] started, you’ll get one hundred answers and some very heated debates,” said Siphiwe Ngwenya, cofounder of Born in Soweto, a homegrown label that’s backed AmaPiano since its early days.
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The genre’s popularity with bedroom producers may also have something to do with its well-established sonic lineage. AmaPiano’s sound is somewhat, though not entirely, influenced by kwaito—a midtempo, lyrically rich brew of R&B, hip-hop, and house that emerged from Gaunteng in the ’90s. Both genres combine the drum patterns and basslines of their 4/4 cousins, but AmaPiano carries a cheery brightness—characterized by jazz-inflected keys, eager vocal cuts, and organ licks constructed over a laid-back 115 bpm framework—that kwaito lacks.
[...]
The genre’s popularity with bedroom producers may also have something to do with its well-established sonic lineage. AmaPiano’s sound is somewhat, though not entirely, influenced by kwaito—a midtempo, lyrically rich brew of R&B, hip-hop, and house that emerged from Gaunteng in the ’90s. Both genres combine the drum patterns and basslines of their 4/4 cousins, but AmaPiano carries a cheery brightness—characterized by jazz-inflected keys, eager vocal cuts, and organ licks constructed over a laid-back 115 bpm framework—that kwaito lacks.
South African DJ and radio host DJ Da Kruk attributes the success of AmaPiano to a wider DJ culture. “The AmaPiano movement has a huge mixtape culture attached to it, which I think was a vehicle to move new music from one ear to the next while festivals, club nights, and (specifically in Mznasi) its own form of dance."
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Excerpt #3
From https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/top-amapiano-songs-january-2020
"Top amapiano songs of January 2020
By Apata Bayode, 10 Feb 2020, ZA [South Africa]
"Last year saw the kwaito-derived amapiano become one of the most talked-about genres in South Africa. The sound made waves around the continent and became inspirational for a number of artists outside its country of origin.
Many producers in South Africa have made the transition from gqom to amapiano and are currently forging a scene that is eclipsing leading genres like hip hop, Afropop and Afro-soul.
As more amapiano releases line up for a 2020 debut, below is a short playlist of the top amapiano songs released in January and featuring some of the genre’s most well-known South African artists.
Emcimbini by Kabza De Small, DJ Maphorisa, Samthing Soweto, Aymos, Mas Musiq and Myztro
'Emcimbini' is no doubt the top amapiano track so far this year. The song is off Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa's 2020 Scopions Kings album, which is doing well on streaming platforms.
Phoyisa by Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa ft. Cassper Nyovest and Qwestakufet
The song is a definite hit and serves as a new-year gift from the hottest artists of 2019 – Kabza and Phori.
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Warning: The label on the video that is included in that article indicates that "Emcimbini" has explicit content.
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