Kwaito
The 8 Best Kwaito
Tracks of All Time
House music slowed to a walking pace in Johannesburg townships in the first years after apartheid, with the vocal shifted from singing to a half-spoken chant in tsotsitaal. The sound of a generation that had just been given a country.
- Origin
- Johannesburg, South Africa, 1993
- Tempo
- 100–115 BPM
- Also known as
- kwaai, south african house, township house
- Tracks
- 8
- Updated
- 2026-08-29
Listen to the whole list
Play it through here →One record after another, with the verdicts
Take 7 of 8 to YouTube → (opens in a new tab)
Opens the list on YouTube as a playlist you can save to your own account. We never see your account, and nothing is stored here. 1 of these records have no verified YouTube link yet, so they are left out rather than guessed at.
Number 1: Arthur Mafokate / Kaffir
1995
A dance record built around a plea not to be called a slur, and the first real controversy of the new South Africa. Sold over half a million copies and defined what the genre was allowed to be about.
Also on Dancing to Bad News, The Waxonia Desk — Out of Durban, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 2: M'du Masilela / Tsiki Tsiki
1994
From the debut of the producer the scene calls the godfather. The template arrives here: house architecture, township tempo, and a vocal that talks rather than sings.
Also on 1994
Number 3: Mandoza / Nkalakatha
2000
The record that crossed every line the country still had. A kwaito track adopted by rugby crowds and suburbs alike, and the closest thing post-apartheid South Africa had to a shared anthem.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 4: Brenda Fassie / Vulindlela
1997
Not strictly kwaito and impossible to leave out. Fassie was already a star when the genre arrived, and she absorbed it into the biggest South African record of the decade.
Number 6: Boom Shaka / It's About Time
1993
The group that made kwaito a pop proposition rather than a producer's genre, and took the criticism for it. Everything the scene later argued about is already latent here.
Number 7: Mashamplani / Vokol as Niks
1995
Mdu's group at their most functional — a chant, a bassline and no interest in a chorus. Kwaito working exactly as designed, with nothing added for the radio.