Louder! From maskandi to gqom
Durban’s ever-growing sonic pulse.
Of South Africa’s three major cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town get the lion’s share of attention as far as the cultural and entertainment scenes go. Yet, when it comes to spawning some of the most influential musicians and creating new musical genres, there is no denying the influence of the city known as eThekwini.
“I don’t think it’s possible to really measure the influence Durban has had, but it’s immense. From Nasty C to Shekhinah; from gqom to Durban house – it is impossible to deny that this city has constantly pushed the bar higher and higher for the whole country, and has provided music that the entire world resonates with,” says music journalist, host and producer of the Almost Perfect podcast, Bob Perfect.
From DJ Black
Coffee and DJ Tira’s
Afrotainment stable, to rapper Nasty
C – who recently released his latest album, Zulu Man With Some Power,
with American Def
Jam Records and a marketing campaign in which his face was splashed on the side of buildings in Times Square – through to a number of dance music genres.
Indeed, a fair amount of the popular sounds coming from South Africa right now have some connection to Durban, whether it be artists raised in the KwaZulu-Natal city or genres like gqom, a form of electronic dance music that mixes hip-hop beats with a house music tempo that generates a pulsating and energy sapping sound which sends people into a virtual hypnotic trance.
Frontrunners of the genre, such as duos RudeBoyz and Distruction Boyz, as well as DJ Lag – who has also worked with Beyoncé– have become household names. DJs such as DBN Gogo have also represented the city well on the popular amapiano scene.
Admittedly, this roll call doesn’t make for an exhaustive list of the wealth of musical influence and talent coming out of Durban – it can’t. And we haven’t even started on Durban’s promising underground scene. While in recent times international attention has been focused on gqom as the sound of Durban, the city is a melting pot of music.
Take maskandi, for example – the Zulu folk music genre will always be part of Durban’s sonic heritage. One of the genre’s finest, Mroza Fakude’s Van Damme song, which spoke about overcoming challenges, won SABC Summer Song of the Year 2016.
“Maskandi is a mosaic of musical styles that is a consequence of the meeting of various cultures from all over southern Africa. The music emerged out of the conditions of colonisation, particularly the migrant labour system. The mining of gold and other minerals led to large contingents of black people leaving their homes to work in the mining areas. It is in these mining camps that maskandi was created,” wrote Mbe Mbhele in a 2018 article in the Mail and Guardian.
To this day, maskandi’s distinct sound is not lost on Durban’s city centre: Maskandi can be heard at markets, or sung by someone trying their luck performing at a busy taxi rank at peak hour, or even by someone sitting next to you in a taxi.
In a 2017 article, Huffington Post researcher Bongiwe Gumede wrote: “The genre combines the use of vernacular lyrics with Western musical instruments such as guitar, concertina, violin and piano accordion. What makes maskandi recognisable is the distinct guitar and concertina which is ‘doctored’ to produce a certain pitch...”
He adds: “Although maskandi has popularly been known as a typically ‘Zulu’ type of music performed by Zulu men, many literary and academic scholars have argued that contemporary maskandi is not limited to the Zulu culture, but is found in isiXhosa, isiNdebele, Sesotho, and Setswana culture.”
Other than gqom and maskandi, the city also has a solid output of hip-hop, pop and punk, as well as house music offshoots such as techno, dubstep and trance.
Yet Bob Perfect points to a lack of resources: “I don’t think there’s much that really separates Durban artists from the rest of the country or the rest of the world, other than a lack of support and resources. That lack of resources and support often means that Durban artists are typically hungrier than their counterparts from around the country, which is why they often thrive [only] when they leave the city... That said, even though Durban artists are under-supported by local government and the general public, the industry has still grown into a force to be reckoned with.”