Saturday, 30 March 2013
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.
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Our hour.
Music. Our KwaiCore. The frequencies enter your ear canal, penetrate your eardrum, vibrate, and are interpreted by your brain as a kind of music you've never heard before. A kind of music alien to you, yet full of body, soul, and life. It's the time when you can feel our stories behind the beats, behind the vocals, behind the rhythms. It is the Light hour. When you realize that life is much more than you, than us. Being aware of what you are, not what you want to be. It is our hour.
Sunday, 24 March 2013
It takes time and work.
The South African music scene has a very haphazard behavior in terms of the kind of music that comes out, and the kind of music people never get to hear about, but still manage to pull a decent crowd at a show. From what I've seen, the biggest bands in South Africa, like The Parlotones, who have now moved to Los Angeles to further their careers, Shadowclub, and Isochronous, have spent at least 3 years to get to where they are today. All their sounds change, evolve, become better, or become worse. They eventually start appearing on TV here, on our most popular and biggest radio station, 5fm, and release a couple of music videos on Youtube. Most of these bands I've mentioned haven't exploded overnight. It's taken Isochronous about 4 years to get to where they are now and having their music played on the biggest radio station has helped them 100 fold. Shadowclub, originally very Blues, have adapted their sound, improved their look, shot great music videos, and are now one of the biggest bands in SA. I can say the same for Zebra and Giraffe. A group like Die Antwoord, survive more on hype and craze, rather than actual musical talent. Kind of like a Lady Gaga, minus the talent. They are a product more than anything else, and their look, behaviour and attitude can never stray too far from what Die Antwoord has become known for, or people will lose credibility in the Act and just cut off their interests. What most people overseas forget to acknowledge, is that Yolandi and "Ninja" have a very normal background. Watkin Tudor Jones "Ninja" used to be an artist living in Cape town, no crazy hair, no crazy accent, no pointless tattoos. He actually doesn't even have an Afrikaans accent. It's all put on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watkin_Tudor_Jones
Trending a music scene.
People say there isn't really a music scene in Durban. And I agree with that. You'll always have those people who follow absolutely every trend that comes their way and see themselves as "hipster", when actually they're just following what ever mainstream shit the media throws out at them. We need something more here, something people can always turn to, and always have fun being at. The dwindling music scene's explanation can be found right within the people of Durban. How many people would rather come out to see live music, and how many would rather spend a shit load of money on food and nightclubs where every night the same DJ puts on the same commercial music literally just off his Mac. What makes it even worse is that they try to make it look like they are DJ'ing by fiddling with a few buttons here and there, but really, nothing worth your hard-earned moola. People just don't appreciate arts and culture here. We live in a sleepy hollow where anything and everything has an expiry date; music especially. We aim to turn that around. And turn it around for good. Hit them so hard with this new genre that their ears will fall pregnant and they'll shit bricks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)