Tic-tac among all the bad breath

It was only until 2001 that SA artists and music found their way to Europe and the US. This electric, new found freedom gave SA musicians easier access to international works and a greater ability to freely express themselves too. As a result of this, Kwaito has been known as the express of this delicious new freedom and many anti-apartheid chants have been used as lyrics for Kwaito songs. Kwaito is called "the music that defines the generation who came of age after Apartheid."

Another thing Ndonsa told me, is that schools in townships were unable to fund programs like music classes to enhance the learning experiences of the students. Kwaito, didn't require a formal knowledge of music theory or large spaces to rehearse. Kwaito was engaging, exciting, and most imprtantly easily accessible to people in these downtrodden communities. It gave them a sense of community where there were none, too.

Boiled water

Kwaito's first single became a hit in South Africa. Let's abbreviate South Africa for SA, shall we now children? It's just easier.

"Kaffir" by Arthur Mafokate was the first hit. As all of you know, this was the most insulting and derogatory term an African person could be called during the Apartheid regime. This song illustrated freedom of expression resulting from the political liberation in South Africa.

The arrival of house music in Cape Town in the early 1990s spread to Johannesburg which made it really popular in clubs like 4th World. Local artists fused its sound with that of SA music.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBB7C1E3F14C3FAD6

We all love being privy to a back story.

It's a Saturday night and we're all chilling together in Senzo's lounge. Smoking, drinking, and talking. They say I'm being anti-social because I'm on my laptop instead of hanging with them. They know what I'm doing, and that I'm supposed to be doing it to help the band, but they still try to pry me away and give me a double southern comfort and lime on the rocks. How could I say no to that?!

I'd like to tell you more about Kwaito's background. I didn't know much about it myself until I actually started engaging with it for Light Hour. Kwaito led a post-apartheid township subculture into the mainstream. Funny enough, Afrikaans, being "the language of the oppressor", was often drawn into Isicamtho vocab, reshaped and used in a related or new context. Isicamtho was and still is, the language spoken by the people of Soweto at the time. When House music started getting popular, people from the ghetto called it Kwaito after the Akrikaans word "Kwaai," to be angry. In this context they saw it as tracks that were hot, that "they were kicking." The most popular and well-known Kwaito artist Arthur Mafokate describes the relationship between Kwaito and gangsterism as music revolving around ghetto life.

In a time when South Africa was transforming, Kwaito took shape in townships in Soweto at the same time when Nelson Mandela took office as the first democratically elected president of South Africa.

The subsequent removal of political and economic sanctions greatly transformed the South African music industry forever. 

Some Kwaito in your Face-oh

Know what you're chewing on.

From the audience stats I've been looking at, most of our readers aren't from South Africa. Americans, Russians, and Germans. Some of you are even from wonderful exotic places like Malaysia and Indonesia. That's fantastic! We want to reach as many people as possible. It's an awesome thing to have people from all over the world hopping on board your journey with you. For those of you who don't know about Kwaito, this post is solely dedicated with much loves and cares, to you. 

So, what is Kwaito? It's a music genre which came about in Johannesburg during the 1990s. You can think of it as a form of house music, but with that African flare and personality you can't find anywhere else in the world...duh! It has a slower tempo than the usual house and it usually has extremely catchy melodies and percussive loop samples. Oh! And you can't forget the deep bass lines and quirky vocals. In a way, you can say it's similar to Hip-hop but the distinctive feature about Kwaito is the way the lyrics are sung. They're either rapped, shouted, or sung conventionally.  In a typical Kwaito song you'll hear synthesizer, sampler, percussion, vocals, and a drum machine. The interesting thing about Kwaito, is that the word originates from the Afrikaans "Kwaai", meaning angry. 

Quarks that should "matter"

Kwaito and Hardcore. You're probably thinking to yourself, "Why the hell would you want to combine these two? Are you bored with your life?" And the answer to that is quite simply, yes. Fuck the system! We want to delve into something we ourselves were a little hesitant and nervous about doing, but then thought to ourselves, as cliche' as this sounds, that our lives are short. Compared to the infinite numbers of galaxies out there, we don't really even exist. We are dust particles in a giant vacuum cleaner. Not even! We're atoms. No...even smaller than that! We're QUARKS! Quarks are elementary particles that build up matter. They are powerful strings because of their mass and precision. 

http://my-retrospace.blogspot.com/2009/06/foxy-ladies-1-cyb-and-patricia.html