MZANSI MUZIQ 2021 🇿🇦 Rolling South Africa thread

by popular demand: a thread that’s meant to function as the focal point for all the wonderful new music coming out of the good land of Mzansi (and immediate surroundings). this is the place to post your favourite tracks by your favourite amaKhosi nezIndlovukazi (that’s kings and queens in Zulu) of amapiano, gqom, (afro)house, kwaito, soul and rap, and whatever else might strike (y)our fancy...

(and yes, this means that it’s more or less replacing the mini-myriad of SA-themed threads (Sun-El, “eMcimbini”/Kabza, Amapiano) that have sprung up recent(ish)ly. they are still here obviously, but use them wisely, lovingly and sparingly. it's easy if you try - I hope)

let's kick off with a repost from the Sun-El thread of the current big summer hit in SA right now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AagjAUE8U8s
Blaq Diamond • SummerYoMuthi

huge amapiano track, not (yet?) on Spotify/etc for some reason:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2oUtIhSX00
DJ Obza • Dlozi’lam
(Shazam, in all its wisdom, lists the artist as “Joynomics”)

another very good current Obza track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5etyYdRRCBo
DJ Obza ft. Leon Lee • Mang’ Dakiwe

Limpopo (in the) house: there’s much more where Master KG came from. as producers go, there’s also DJ Call Me. here he is with the awesome Makhadzi, whose recent album I nominated for the EOY, but Call Me’s own album is equally good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb77lccDHKo
DJ Call Me ft. Makhadzi & Mr Brown • Maxaka

more about this genre of “bolobedu house” here:
https://www.okayafrica.com/master-kg-jerusalema-bolobedu-house-tracks-check-out/

...and I'm also loving this track at the moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb2HYdZMaGQ
DJ Luvas ft. Mnisi • Egoli

so much for me for now - what are your favs of the moment?

Is this gonna be all pop music? Because I've been listening to a fuckton of South African jazz the last couple of years and that shit is amazing. Crucial names: Nduduzo Makhathini, Ndabo Zulu, Linda Sikhakhane, Thandi Ntuli, Siya Makuzeni, Bokani Dyer, Benjamin Jephta.

The Brownswood label is putting out a compilation called Indaba Is later this month. Here's the first single, Bokani Dyer's "Ke Nako":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2Mvqyc7DMM

My favorite that (I think) wasn't posted on last year's thread is "Mercedes" by Semi Tee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4-FPxxH7b8

We’re bundling the various South African offshoots of the Rolling Afropop thread into one Rolling SA thread (of which this is the first edition), so yeah, the focus is definitely on “pop”, but as long as any non-pop stuff you’re posting is current I think we can *roll* with it. Pretty sure at least some people will appreciate the jazz!

As for “Mercedes”, it was posted on the Amapiano Awesomeness thread back in May. Semi Tee is a blast, and so is rapper Focalistic, who's on this track.

Egad, I was wrong! Well, I guess that's why it's a good idea to have one thread instead of half a dozen.

Jazz makes sense since it's such a big part of the SA music mindset, imo. Very happy about this thread in general.

JazziDisciples to thread!

There's a cover story on South African jazz (based around the aforementioned Indaba Is compilation) in the new issue of The Wire, which just came out today:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eriu4-jXIAEqX1j.jpg

Jazz and pop have some overlap these days imo.

Have you guys heard this 2019 album by Tlale Makhene “s.g 2.0”? It’s so good, I’ve been obsessed w it lately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdZImX0f1CE

Damn deej, this album is amazing! When are we rerunning the 2019 EOY?

A profile on Tlale Makhene:
https://www.jazzitout.com/2020/02/21/tlale-is-a-percussionist-whose-drum-beat-was-nurtured-the-swazi-way/

So S.G 2.0 is the follow-up to his 2017 Swazi Gold album, consisting in large part of “remixes” of that album’s tracks. The track deej posted (which is new) is actually the only percussion-heavy one, the rest is much closer to Makhene’s own description of them as “lounge and soul” (for “lounge” read “electronic”, I guess). Musical partner and producer Ziyawa Ka Zitha (who’s from Eswatini/Swaziland) quite probably plays a big role here. Opening track “Gegege”, which I'm currently luxuriating in, is just him (Ziyawa) with singer Juda Selitjane:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3elGc7YvZ0

(I’m a sucker for the kind of vocal harmonies that are employed on this album, they remind me of early 90s r&b and stuff, but you also hear them in turn-of-the-century SA house trio SHANA, featuring a young Black Coffee.)

Listening to Swazi Gold now, and some of the original versions are pretty old-school gospely soul jazz and their “remixes” on 2.0 really are *something else* altogether, his way of “mov[ing] with the times before finding himself on the other side of evolution”. But not everything is: the original “Emabhunswini” for instance is a trip and a half in itself.

this thread sure got off to an unexpected start - not complaining tho!

^that sounds cool, will check it out.

If we're still talking about recent jazz, I listened to the Ndabo Zulu album Queen Nandi yesterday and it's stunningly good: https://ndabozulu.bandcamp.com/album/queen-nandi-the-african-symphony.

Yeah, I love that record. I actually had a long Zoom conversation with Ndabo Zulu, Nduduzo Makhathini and Mbuso Khoza about it when I was writing a review of the album.

Off the 2021 tip, one thing I wanted to do this year was explore more of the older music from Africa (I've been following since 2019, but given all the great songs I've heard imagine all the great stuff I missed before then!). I've been enjoying going through this list as a starting point: https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/lifestyle/2014-07-15-the-100-greatest-south-african-songs/

One highlight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1OQLHHH63M

that’s Felix Laband • Whistling In Tongues, from 2002.

my request for this thread (and all other music threads really):

🔻🔻Could everyone please label the tracks they are posting?
It makes it so much easier to search for something, and as with all internet links, there is every chance these YouTubes (or Soundclouds or whatever the case may be) will become broken at some point (in a couple of years perhaps, or you know, next week, it happens all the time), and then we won’t have anything left to go on.🔺🔺

that list looks great, Greg, I feel the same about getting to know the classics better, but while I'm busy thread (traffic) policing - a reminder that we have a dedicated thread for older African pop:

Old School Afropop

(btw some ilxors might be interested to learn that that Laband track also received the Todd Terje remix treatment)

not sure how much longer TNS intends to continue to drip drop tracks before he releases his album (the tally is now at six), but this is one of the best so far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMeb01inrCA
TNS ft. Nokwazi Mtshali & Nomcebo Mthethwa • Kwamashu

The DJ Obza album (it’s called Masego and features “Mang’ Dakiwe” but not “Dlozi’lam”) is very good.

Since we accept jazz, let's also accept r&b. This song from last year is quite magnetic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEWCJc1atvc
Elaine - You're the One

Through some odd channels, I recently came into a digital copy of Phelimuncasi's first record from 2016, which has seemingly disappeared from the internet. It's quality gqom, really digging it today.

ooh that TNS track breastcrawl posted is really cool