SA’s dissident sound will not die
Kwaito’s best days lie ahead with a fresh new generation of artists
WHEN Mandoza died in September, a wellknown South African jour nalist launched into a diatribe about the kwaito singer – and the genre itself.
He kicked off his vitriol by slamming Mduduzi “Mandoza” Tshabalala’s decision to play live at the Thank You SABC concert, calling his performance “prosaic” (or dead) and – in a superior tone – declaring Mandoza “should never have been” at the concert.
Now, anyone who has seen that footage will probably agree that Mandoza was in no shape to perform, let alone leave his home. But he wanted to be there and wanted the public to see him at his most vulnerable, which was a bold enactment of what Mandoza had often spoke about in some of his songs: nothing can get me down.
Lol’ikhalizakho ushon’empini / ‘khusele bonk’abakini /yekel’umbhed’oknakile / bayeke bonk’abanyabile.
A summarised, loose translation is Mandoza imploring listeners to prepare themselves to defend their families, and pay no attention to people who are “full of nonsense”, with nothing of value to add.
These lyrics are from Indoda, where Mandoza speaks about how a man can fall on hard times today, but rise up to be stronger tomorrow. Mandoza’s appearance at the con- cert was a visual representation of what he spoke about in that song.
The part about paying no attention to people who are “full of nonsense” is aimed at the likes of that journalist who, for some reason, felt the need to pass judgment on an artist and genre they, quite frankly, know nothing about.
Concluding his incoherent tirade, the journalist snootily postulated that Mandoza attended the concert because, like many “hasbeen” musicians, he saw the broadcaster’s 90 percent local content policy as a “lucrative new and perhaps last-gasp revenue stream”.
“After all,” he said, “kwaito’s best days are behind it. Perhaps it had only ever been that one-hit genre.” The journalist was referring to Mandoza’s iconic song, Nkalakatha (2000). Really? Kwaito a one-hit genre? Speaking at the memorial service for Mandoza in Joburg, kwaito legend Kabelo “Bouga Luv” Mabalane explained why his generation of musicians chose kwaito in the mid-1990s: “We chose (it) because staying true to our context was a conviction we were willing to defend against whatever odds. We were from (Soweto areas) Diepkloof, Phiri, Mapetla, Zola and Mndeni.”
Mabalane underwent a major transfor mation from his early musical days with superstars TKZee, where he got involved in a well-documented life of drug and alcohol abuse – and a perusal of his catalogue as a solo artist reveals his journey to sobriety.
For example, in the 2002-released song For as Long Ngisaphefumula ( For as Long as I Live), Mabalane mentions that he will “smoke zol (dagga) and get high” for as long as he lives.
A few months later, after checking himself into rehab and beginning his road to recovery, Mabalane released his award-winning album And the Beat Goes On, which featured the smash hit Zonke ( Everything) – where he outlined how badly he wanted to achieve success and gain what comes with it.
Sukela k’dala umuntu afis’ukuthi angaphumelela / ngaphandle kweyidagamizo, ngaziyela (loosely translated: “I have wanted to be successful for a long time now / and without the abuse of drugs, I’m on the road to success”).
Subsequent albums by Bouga Luv are laden with powerful messages to listeners not to be subsumed into societal ills. As Mandoza did.
Ngangen’ejele ngaphuma, ngaphinde ngasavaiva / ngabhem’amadrugs ngaphuma, ngaphinde ngasavaiva (loosely translated: “I was in and out of jail, and I still survived / I abused drugs and stopped, and I still survived”).
These are the lyrics to Mandoza’s song Hloniph’ilife ( Respect Life), where he graphically outlined most, if not all, the mistakes he’d made, the song also being a powerful message to listeners, and young people in particular, that they respect life and their elders to enjoy blessings and success in the future.
This is the beauty of kwaito music – being able to fuse noteworthy messages with a unique sound which is (mostly) slow in tempo, infused with percussion instruments and heavily influenced by the 1920s marabi sound, the kwela sound of the 1950s and the bubblegum music of the 1980s popularised by the late Brenda Fassie.
You dance and gain enlighten- ment at the same time.
As the non-profit website South African History Online writes: “Kwaito is about the township, knowing about the township, understanding the township, walking the walk, talking the talk, being proud of these things.
“The township is being celebrated in kwaito music (which) is interesting when one considers that the township was created to keep a steady supply of cheap labour under control by the apartheid government.”
And that is the essence of kwaito about which that journalist is most ignorant. It chronicles – in an audiovisual manner – the life of millions of black South Africans who grew up or who live in working-class areas and poor townships, designated by a repressive regime as reservoirs of cheap labour and mental enslavement.
The pride in township life prevalent in kwaito songs is not Stockholm syndrome-esque in nature. Instead, kwaito artists wanted to promote a message that, despite the challenges faced in the places where they live, these can be overcome.
Listening to the le gendary Arthur “Vuvuzela” Mafokate’s controversial yet seminal song Kaffir as a primary school boy from the township of Katlehong, Ekurhuleni, I began to understand that Mafokate wanted to wean black people off their inferiority complexes that were, and are, held as a result of centuries of mental slavery perpetrated by oppressive political systems.
So, saying this genre is nothing more than a “one-hit genre” is an insult to many fans, such as myself, who imbibed the salient messages contained in the songs which spoke to us as boys and girls growing up as part of an evil social engineering experiment, trying to make sense of a brutal legacy and striving to face up to that.
Today, kwaito has undergone a metamorphosis into many sounds such as motswako, skhanda rap, new age kwaito and so on, which are all evolutions of the pioneering sound Mandoza and his generation introduced in the 1990s.
South African musicians who perform the evolved sound of kwaito are selling out 20 000-seater arenas, winning multiple inter national awards and being interviewed by the world-renowned American music personality, Sway Calloway.
Kwaito’s best days are not behind it. Rather, they still lie ahead in the fresh new sounds which branched out from the genre, where the new generation of artists are continuing to relate urban South Africa’s story.
And no amount of acerbic writing will diminish Mandoza and kwaito’s impact on democratic South Africa’s ongoing cultural development.