What to talk about?
Today I think im gonna a bit off topic, I will share with
you one of my passions. This being house music. I recently started a blog on
the origins of house music. One of the lessons that I learnt this year is to
follow ones passion.
One of the recent articles I wrote was on the birth of house
music in South Africa.
As much as we need to pay homage
to Chicago for being the architect for the house that Jack built, they had no
idea that their music was fueling the rage and resistance against apartheid.
House music became a cultural fabric of one of the most complex places on
earth; house music was part of the Mandela’s (both Winnie and Nelson’s)
cultural vocabulary.
As much as heads were busy with
their own developments, blending music that Traxx Records, Paradise garage and
Mt Fingers gave out. Topped off with what The Warehouse, West End Records and
Steve “Silk” Hurley offered. These producers had no idea that the migration of
this electronic cultural product called house was travelling beyond their
shores and settling in the South African townships.
House music in South Africa did
not start with the talented and contemporary Black Coffee, Culoe de Song and
Soulistic crew, in fact, House in South Africa has roots almost as long as Hip
Hop’s golden era in the Boogie Down Bronx.
DJ Clive Bean of Soul Candi
records remembers hearing “The Godfather of house”, Chicago’s own Frankie
Knuckles in 1987 at a local stokvel, which we all know is South Africans
equivalent of a Harlem Speakeasy. Back then the sound was called international
music and thought of as hardcore music as it was different from the bubble gum
music that artists like the legendary Brenda Fassie sang which most of us were
listening to at that time. International went in hand in hand with isi’Pantsula
dancing, a local traditional dance that came to life in the townships,
primarily in the 80’s and gained momentum with the dismantling of the apartheid
regime.
House music is the same age as
our democratic dispensation in South Africa, however the increase in access to
overseas sound material in the early 90’s led to House Music’s growth locally.
We were listening to this music at the height of the apartheid resistance.
House Music was a part of the soundtrack of social change and was the
underground answer to the chains of restriction imposed by the Dutch/British
minority who occupied South Africa through the system of apartheid.
The track by Jay Williams “Sweat”
(Big Beat Records, NYC) reminds one of the struggle floor filler…” “We gonna
sweat till you set them free”…
In fact, the Bronx, the South
Side of Chicago and South Africa were all united by the stank of
disenfranchisement and the electronic music inspired by the lived reality of
people in all three places which amplified the inequalities that connected
black people around the world.
This is due to the fact that
house deals with the difficult issues we have been unable to resolve in our
material reality. In the music we see the co-mingling of ambiguities within the
post apartheid scenario. House music conflates theses issues in a dynamic and
experiential way, addressing precisely that which we have been unable to speak
in words.
The sound of South African house
is characterized by the bass heavy, “churchified” synthesized sound of classic
Chicago house and some Euro – tech sounds heard coming from Germany and
England. Prior to the South African invasion that we came to know through
DJs/producers like Kent or Black Motion, pioneers of the sound like DJ Oskido
and Arthur Mafokate took this township electro funk, slowed down the beloved
120bpm groove to 90bpm, added a social context and called it Kwaito music.
However this did not take off too well in the international market.
The feeling that came over in
South Africa spoke to a larger point that had never really been considered.
Deep house is healing as compared to Kwaito music, maybe that’s why kwaito
didn’t really have the legs to push on. This all makes sense that a place still
haunted by the ghosts of apartheid would make House Music the sound of daily
living. These days house music can be heard on local and national radio
stations, in clubs, taxi’s, retail stores, everywhere and anywhere. Basically
any and everyone from waiters to doctors have their feet tapping to the tunes
of house music.
So it is not surprising that
South Africa has been dubbed the world’s biggest House Music Market per capita,
and to clarify that, the love and creation of House doesn’t stop at the South
African borders, it can be heard in neighboring countries such as Mozambique,
Botswana and Namibia.
There is a dangerous, and at this
point, boring focus on Black American music as being the sound of the African
Diaspora. To learn more about Black American music, we must reach into the soul
of it. There we’ll discover Brazil, Ghana, Jamaica and a host of other global
influences. We’re a multi-dimensional people and our music reflects the true
meaning of Diaspora. Who’s to say what ancestor used you as a vessel to create
your sound? Let’s share the bass that unites us…
