Amapiano emerged out of Soweto in Johannesburg in the recent 5 years, popularised in the legendary Poniaza club.

Musically, it is a reaction against the previous style to dominate the South African scene for some years, Gqom, an intense and heavy Afro-rave music defined by a relentless and often manic energy, which evolved out of the rougher side of Durban House.

Amapiano swings the vibes hammer all the way in the other direction: towards more melody, more musicality, more conventionally pleasing sounds, and drops the BPM from 130 down to exactly 114.

A vision of African Futurism decidedly the opposite of European sonic futurism:

The music featured in the prestigious European showcase festivals has been and is primarily about a rejection of history: minimalist bleeps and bloops, noise and bass, that comprise attempts at total divorce from past movements and genres, at destruction of music as we know it.

In stark contrast, Amapiano, perhaps emblematic of African Futurism, embraces all of the past styles of social music in the modern period at the same time as it is informed by pre-modern traditions: recognisable influences from Jazz, Reggae, Dancehall, Hip Hop, R'n'B, Disco, House, Electro, Bass, even vocal chart Pop, all held together by re-emergent ancestral polyrhythms finding new expression with a signature percussive bass.

At the same time as it is “accessible”, Amapiano is revolutionary in a formal sense. The very structure of dance music is radically transformed as the relationship between lows and highs, between bass and melody, is flipped.

In Western (Afro-American) modern dance music, the bass kick provides a constant repeating pattern on top of which higher frequencies float, doing variations within sameness.

The central passages of Amapiano tracks turns this on its head: the constant repeating patterns are done with the highs, such as melodic refrains, and it is the BASS which does variations within the sameness, recalling the Mama Ngoma drum of the Congo, largest and heaviest of the family of drums, always doing the solos.

With radical innovation happening in many places all over the mother continent every few years, Amapiano is only 1 wave in oceans of living, constantly evolving rhythm culture. But it clearly demonstrates a modus operandi that is both very different from Western approaches, as well as an exponentially more vast knowledge and conceptual base on which new configurations can arise.

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