I experienced one of my first glimpses into the complexity and scope of the South African music scene when I was grooming a world music blog for new content and inadvertently stumbled across a (unbeknownst to me at the time) famous South African kwaito anthem by the name of “Nkalakatha.” An unexpected mix of slowed-down house grooves, bumping 808s and forceful, rhythmic Zulu chanting, I found the song’s aesthetic to be completely unique and unfamiliar, yet somehow surprisingly relatable. I had a hard time even assigning the sound to a particular decade – its production seemed just as relevant to today’s trends as to those of the several decades past.
This wasn’t the first time I’d stumbled across something out of South Africa that completely threw me for a loop. I’d already discovered Die Antwoord’s music, most likely by introduction of their infamous, gratuitously violent, yet somehow whimsical and subversively poetic music videos. Then there was, of course, Paul Simon’s Graceland, perhaps one of the only instances of South African-influenced American pop music to reach chart-topping success in the 1980s. All of these types of music, despite their obvious differences, share the quality of having achieved widespread regional and even international popularity, while simultaneously challenging the status quo of whatever genres or influences preceded them.
With that being said, kwaito seemed to stand out from the other South African-created (or inspired) types of music I’d heard before, such as Die Antwoord’s “zef” Afrikaans style or Paul Simon’s signature, though potentially appropriative sound, which featured South African isicathamiya-style singing mostly as a sonic backdrop to his own English lyrics. It reminded me of some of my other favorite kinds of musical movements, such as Brazilian funk and Jamaican dancehall, that aesthetically suggest an entire narrative or network of musical influence – clearly there were drum machines and synthesizers involved, as well as sampling, and touches of European house and American hip hop influence. This was a musical style that had force, and character, and an undeniably signature sound; yet it was clearly not conceived in a vacuum. It made me want to learn more about where this genre came from, and what styles of influences might have facilitated it.
My interest in kwaito provided the original impetus for the Analog Roots Project, of which South Africa will hopefully be the first of many installments. It started when a cursory search of the country’s musical history made me realize there was so much here – a combination of grassroots and imported music influences, forces of governmental oppression, technological innovation, and an ever-vibrant youth culture that all exerted their own scopes of influence – and it didn’t seem that anyone else had effectively captured the scope of it in an accessible, fully-encompassing way. I thought it would be helpful to create a resource that encapsulate some of the creative force of this country in a visually and sonically accessible way – to help paint a picture of how musical movements can come to be, and perhaps shed some light on how urban and street-culture-oriented grassroots music genres – which often go unrecognized or unfavored by musical elites – are just as meaningful as the classical or folk music movements that have received more traditional recognition. Nevertheless, whatever the type of music, my aim for the Analog Roots Project is to provide evidence to support the notion that music, in many respects, functions as a communication avenue for ideas and sentiments that can often outlive and outperform more ‘traditional’ avenues like education, science, and even language when it comes to uniting people and affecting social change across geographical and cultural divides.