{"id":41641,"date":"2019-06-20T16:54:19","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T15:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/the-power-of-kwaito-music-in-conversation-with-sandy-b-2\/"},"modified":"2021-07-12T17:19:20","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T15:19:20","slug":"the-power-of-kwaito-music-in-conversation-with-sandy-b-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/the-power-of-kwaito-music-in-conversation-with-sandy-b-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The power of kwaito music: In conversation with Sandy B"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In the early 90s, South African underground star Sandy B released\u00a0Amajovi Jovi<\/em>, a six-track education on kwaito – the genre that was soundtracking a new era for South Africans at the end of the century.<\/h4>\n

Combining house, hip-hop, and traditional SA sounds, kwaito made a space for resistance, and most importantly for movement. Irresistible, deep, soulful bass-lines guided a nation to the dancefloor. Almost 30 years later, Sandy B is back to do the same thing again. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Having dipped his toe into house and reggae since\u00a0<\/span>Amajovi Jovi<\/span><\/i>, including an album entitled\u00a0<\/span>This Is Not Kwaito,\u00a0<\/span><\/i>the elusive king of kwaito is back with a return to his roots in the form of\u00a0<\/span>Qhum Qhaks,\u00a0<\/span><\/i>his second kwaito album. We spoke to Sandy B about the power of kwaito, making history, and the future of the South African music scene.
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What made you want to release another kwaito album?<\/b><\/h5>\n

When asking Sandy why he released another kwaito album after all this time, he spoke of the enjoyment of his music resonating with people; \u2018when you see people enjoying your music and listening to songs they\u2019ve never heard and you see people singing along as if they\u2019ve always known your music, it\u2019s really special\u2019. Despite not having a huge international success,\u00a0<\/span>Amajovi Jovi\u00a0<\/span><\/i>touched crate-diggers around the world and was re-released in 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n

Realising the power of kwaito music, as a sound that is \u2018timeless\u2019 and \u2018versatile\u2019, Sandy B has taken it into his hands to spread a message of joy and dance. \u2018There\u2019s no place where [people] hear my music and they just stand still. I just get the same reaction everywhere. That\u2019s surprising because most of the places I\u2019ve been to, they\u2019re hearing Sandy B for the first time\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sandy B\u2019s renewed success could arguably be down to the vinyl resurgence that has been taking place in the Western world over the last few years. Since the mid-2000s, record sales have been steadily increasing to the point where vinyl is controversially a mainstream form of music consumption. \u2018In South Africa we don\u2019t really release new music on vinyl anymore and I don\u2019t think there has been any new kwaito music ever released on vinyl by a South African artist, so for me it\u2019s also making history\u2019. With\u00a0<\/span>Amajovi Jovi\u00a0<\/span><\/i>re-released on vinyl in 2017 and\u00a0<\/span>Qhum Qhaks\u00a0<\/span><\/i>currently only available to buy on vinyl, Sandy B is making a statement: kwaito is greater than South Africa. It is a global sound.<\/span><\/p>\n

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How would you define the sound coming out of South Africa now?<\/b><\/h5>\n

\u2018The sound changed in South Africa but I still believe the 90s kwaito sound was the greatest. I tried to switch to accommodate the new market but my heart has always been in the kwaito sound because that sound is timeless. The Amajovi Jovi sound is forever\u2019.<\/p>\n

The beauty of kwaito is its ability to blend so many genres in order to create something sonically unique. Paying homage to hip-hop, house, r&b and g-funk, kwaito\u2019s unique blend defined a new time for South Africa in the early 90s, a spirit Sandy is keen to bring back. \u2018Unfortunately you don\u2019t get a lot of new South African artists releasing the kwaito sound,\u2019 says Sandy, \u2018everyone\u2019s just trying to do the same thing as each other\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite his love affair with kwaito, there is another genre that Sandy sees as pushing South African music forward: gqom. Also hailing from Durban, Sandy\u2019s hometown, gqom is the electrifying electronic genre solidifying a name for South African music on the world stage. Clearly inspired by their South African sonic siblings, gqom – meaning drum in zulu – blends styles including house and broken beats, with a high tempo and no bassline, and it is these two sounds that Sandy proffers will have a \u2018long life span\u2019 and \u2018worldwide success\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What does the future hold for kwaito\/Sandy B?<\/b><\/h5>\n

After agreeing on my kwaito name (Amajodie Jodie), Sandy and I spoke of the future of kwaito and the potential of cross-kwaito collaborations. \u2018Anyone who wants to explore new sounds and penetrate the South African market, we can make a hit with them\u2019. \u2018I\u2019m very flexible, I can collaborate with anyone\u2019 and collaborate he plans to do. Reasserting the need for more kwaito worldwide, Sandy expressed he was \u2018very much open to working with new artists in Europe\u2019 and predicted the pending \u2018worldwide collaborations\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

With all the inevitable success of Sandy\u2019s kwaito revival, we spoke of a younger audience trying to emulate the new sound: \u2018they can try but if they want to do it they need to get the original guys involved […]. Maybe it\u2019s time we create the first kwaito artist who\u2019s maybe french – teach him the flow\u2019. Following his album launch party in Paris last month, Sandy B is taking\u00a0<\/span>Qhum Qhaks\u00a0<\/span><\/i>worldwide with as much power, vibrancy and vitality as he did in the 90s – Sandy was keen to remind me that he still felt young and, more importantly, looked young.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over the last few years, there has been a burgeoning thirst for more of these sounds in Europe. Continued re-releases of classic and forgotten African albums is driving the traditional, distinctive and unforgettable melodies into the European mainstream and encouraging artists like Sandy B to keep on creating the \u2018timeless sound\u2019. Effortlessly infectious and irresistible, <\/span>Qhum Qhaks\u00a0<\/span><\/i>is the seven track revival of the original kwaito sound, re-packaged for a new generation on dancefloors worldwide.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In the early 90s, South African underground star Sandy B released\u00a0Amajovi Jovi, a six-track education on kwaito – the genre that was soundtracking a new era for South Africans at the end of the century. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":26567,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7835],"tags":[5027,4096,5860],"location":[7844],"yst_prominent_words":[8447,8933,14324,8402,8435,10360,9834,27856,8543],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41641"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=41641"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=41641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}