Edited by Azizi Powell
This is Part II of a four part pancocojams series on comparisons between United States' Doo-Wop music and South Africa's Gwijo music.
This post presents information about the similarities and differences between these two music genres.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2025/06/information-about-united-states-doo-wop.html for Part I of this pancocojams series. That post presents information about Doo-Wop music and information about Gwijo music.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2025/06/acappella-soul-doo-wop-group-singing.html for Part III of this pancocojams series. That post showcases two YouTube videos of United States Doo Wop music and presents a few selected comments from those videos' discussion threads.
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-south-african-gwijo-thina.html for Part IV of this pancocojams series. That post showcases one YouTube videos of United States Doo Wop music, presents a partial Xhosa transcription with English translations, and presents a few selected comments from those videos' discussion threads.
The content of this post is presented for historical and socio-cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
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THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DOO-WOP MUSIC AND GWIJO MUSIC
From AI result for my June 28, 2025 question "What are the similarities and differences between United States' Doo Wop music and South Africa's Gwijo music?
AI Overview
UThat post showcases another video of St Stithians Boys College singing that gwijo. At the time that pancocojams post was published, that video had no comments. S Doo-wop and South African Gwijo share some key characteristics as vocal-based musical styles, but they also have distinct cultural origins, contexts, and musical elements. Here's a comparison:
Shared Aspects:
-snip-Vocal Group Harmony: Both Doo-wop and Gwijo heavily
emphasize vocal group harmonies. Doo-wop, as its name suggests, is built around
layered vocal arrangements often featuring a lead singer supported by
background harmonies and rhythmic sounds. Gwijo is a practice of collective
singing, deeply embedded in South African Xhosa culture, where groups sing
together in a call-and-response format.
Emphasis on Vocalizations: Both genres often use the human
voice for rhythm and instrumentation. Doo-wop features nonsense syllables as
background "instrumentation," as MasterClass explains. Gwijo also
relies on voices to create rhythmic and emotional depth, particularly in its
traditional a cappella form.
Call-and-Response Structure: Both genres can employ
call-and-response techniques, where a leader or solo voice is answered by a
group. This form promotes participation and community engagement.
Emotional Expression: Both styles can express a wide range
of emotions. Doo-wop often focuses on themes of love, dating, and heartbreak.
Gwijo can express joy, determination, and victory, but also devastation.
Key Differences:
Feature US Doo-Wop
Origin Rhythm and
blues subgenre developed in African-American communities in US cities during
the 1940s-1950s.
Instrumentation - Originally
a cappella, later incorporated simple instrumentation like piano, guitar,
drums, and saxophone.
Primary Function -Primarily entertainment and expressing
personal emotions, particularly romance.
Cultural Context - Strongly influenced by
African-American musical traditions like gospel and blues.
Evolution - Evolved to include more instrumentation and influenced
genres like R&B, soul, and rock.
Feature: South African Gwijo
Origin - Traditional practice of collective singing within
South African Xhosa culture, adapted for various contexts like sports events.
Instrumentation -Primarily a cappella (voice only),
especially in its traditional and most potent forms.
Primary Function - Social, cultural, and spiritual
expression. Can be used for celebrations, protests, community building, and
sports events.
Cultural Context- Deeply rooted in South African Xhosa
culture and traditions.
Evolution- Adapted for new contexts, notably finding
popularity in South African sports, but still retaining its core features.
In essence, while both share a focus on vocal harmony and
emotional expression, Doo-wop is a commercially-oriented music genre while
Gwijo is a culturally significant practice of communal singing with broad
social and spiritual applications."
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MY ADDITIONS TO THAT SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES LIST
Additions and corrections are welcome.
Similarities:
Both Doo Wop and Gwijo are forms of group singing that originated with Black teenage boys and young Black men. It appears from YouTube and Tik Tok videos that gwijo groups are almost entirely composed on Black teenage males and Black young adult men.
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Both Doo Wop and Gwijo have been mostly associated with street singing by non-professional groups of Black teenage males and/or by young Black men.
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Doo-Wop groups, their lead singers, and their record label Doo-Wop songs evoked highly competitive feelings among their fans who promoted/supported their singer/s and their songs over other singer/s and their songs.
Gwijo groups and their songs (popularized on YouTube, Tik Tok, and other social media) appear to evoke the same highly competitive level of "stan" promotion and support as was the case with Doo-Wop music.
For instance, most of the comments in a lot of YouTube gwijo discussion threads focus on a particular lead singer winning (being the best, taking the cup) compared with lead singers in
other gwijo groups, or other singers in that particular video. At the same time, there are hardly any comments about the lyrics of that gwijo, or about the song itself except for general comments about how good that song is.
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Differences
The Doo-wop music genre largely died out in the United States in the 1960s, except for re-enactments (covers) of those songs by singing groups of older men. Groups singing Doo-Wop (or any other type of music) are rarely if ever seen on streets in the United States.
In contrast, singing amagwijo is very much currently alive in South Africa. In 2017, mostly Black rugby fans formed the Gwijo Squad initially to support the Black team members by singing amagwijo at rugby games. Since that year, fans singing amagwijo has become an integral part of other South African sport events such as football (soccer) games and cricket games.
Some members of South African sports teams also sing amagwijo in their locker rooms, on buses to and from sports stadiums, and at other times with the exception of on the sport's field itself.
Furthermore, an increased number of Black South Africans who are (mostly) teenage males and young men have formed groups to sing amagwijo and posted those videos on YouTube, Tik Tok, and other social media, for the pleasure of singing and perhaps also with the hope of getting a record deal. Amagwijo groups also a contracted to sing at private social events such as weddings, funerals, and birthday parties.
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Doo-Woo music was never (is never) sung at sports events or at funerals.
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According to what I've read online, many South Africa Gwijo songs are based on traditional Xhosa songs and/or South African struggle (Apartheid protest) songs, However, if I correctly understand what I've read in comments in various YouTube discussion threads, amagwijo aren't supposed to have completely fixed lyrics, but are supposed to be somewhat extemporaneous.
Here are some comments from the discussion thread of a YouTube video of the gwijo "Mntaka Mama (Thina Siyazalana)" by South Africa's St Stithians Boys College (published by Mr Robot, June 2, 2019. That video is no longer available. However, before that video became inactive, I embedded it in a 2019 pancocojams post about that gwijo and included some comments from its discussion thread in that post: https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-south-african-song-mtaka-mama-thina.html.
Numbers added for referencing purposes only. (The numbers are different in that post.)
1. lwazi juta, 2019
"They forgot what I gwijo is... Busy here is composing and ish.. QUEENS COLLEGE... any day... You don't practice igwijo... Ii lapha kuwe"
-snip-
Google translate from Zulu to English
"Ii lapha kuwe" ="It's here for you"
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2.
"What in the mamamia is this... This is utter disrespect to igwijo... This is flippen choral music not igwijo. An absolute wast of data, watching these boys reduce the spirit of igwijo."
**
3. Nkosi Zulu, 2020
"Gwijo shouldn't be rehearsed and preformed. Even the clapping was rehearsed 😴boring".
-snip-
I replaced that video which was no longer available with another video of St. Stithians Boys College singing that same gwijo. However, that video didn't have any comments at the time that I added it to that pancocojams post.
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In contrast to those descriptions of amagwijo, United States' doo-wop songs were newly composed romantic songs that had standard lyrics. Those lyrics didn't or rarely included lyrics from United States folk music or protest songs.(Note that doo-wop basically died out before the Civil Rights protest movement). Also, doo-wop performances were usually rehearsed.
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This concludes Part II of this pancocojams series.
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