The 8 best Kwaito tracks of all time
Kwaito
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.
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Arthur Mafokate / Kaffir
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.
M'du Masilela / Tsiki Tsiki
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.
Mandoza / Nkalakatha
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.
Brenda Fassie / Vulindlela
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.
Boom Shaka / It's About Time
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.
Mashamplani / Vokol as Niks
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.
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