As amapiano goes global, where does it leave its roots?

In a living room in Aberdeen, a young woman dances alone. She sways from side to side, dropping her knees to a slow, deep, offbeat groove. It’s a song called ‘La Maluka’ by Blaqnick, MasterBlaq and Major League DJz, which was written and recorded eight and a half thousand miles south of Scotland, in the city of Pretoria, South Africa. She films herself on a phone and posts the video on TikTok with the caption, “When it’s sunny in Scotland” and the hashtag #AmapianoDance.

Amapiano is the Rainbow Nation’s biggest cultural export, and over the last decade, the genre has found strong followings across Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia and the USA. Last year, South African singer Tyla won a Grammy for her amapiano song ‘Water,’ and was the first SA solo artist to reach the US Billboard chart in 50 years.

According to data released by Spotify Africa, the subgenre of house music has seen a 5668% increase in streaming globally between 2018 and 2023, with currently over a billion streams for the genre. In the year from 2022 to 2023 alone, its listenership more than doubled, growing by 101%, with the UK being the third biggest streamer of the genre, after SA and the USA.

To understand the story of the music and the phenomena around it, I head to its birthplace: Mamelodi, a township which neighbours Johannesburg.

“It inspires a sense of patriotism,” a local named Pabi explains. “Something that I grew up listening to – that my cousin makes in his studio – is being experienced across the world. We make music to be shared, we make dance moves to be shared, the way we party, the food we have, they’re not made to be kept to ourselves, because what’s the point? Just as long as we stay authentic to the story and how we speak about the story.”

Amapiano bloomed in 2014 from the seeds sown by kwaito, a South African dance genre that had its heyday in the ’90s. More recent influences include bacardi and gqom – forms of electronic dance music that emerged in the 2000s and early 2010s from kwaito’s groove lineage. To find the amapiano sound, producers such as Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa slowed down house beats from 128 bpm to around 112 bpm, mixed in jazzy piano samples – amapiano means the pianos in Zulu – and added synth pads. They’d season the mix with vocals sung in one of the 11 official languages of South Africa. A signature addition to the mix are “log drums” – 808-sounding kick drums tuned to synth bass notes, which can be heard popping and pecking through the mellow rhythm. Ten years in, there are now subgenres such as quantum sound (synth and bass-heavy amapiano), private school piano (mellow amapiano with live instruments) and Ojapiano (a Nigerian style which incorporates the sound of the traditional Igbo flute, the Oja).

In this part of Mamelodi, there are houses next to chemists, next to shops, next to schools, next to post offices, next to internet cafés, next to nightclubs. One of the latter is Jack Budha – an important restaurant-cum-nightclub where the scene was nurtured. It’s where young DJs become local heroes, and where townsfolk come to bathe in basslines, groove, and transcend the concrete dancefloor. It’s lunchtime on a Monday and there’s a do in full swing: tunes cranked, Savanna cider on ice, and a busy buffet of stew and pap. An elder in dusty clothes comes to the club entrance and waits. As ‘Ukhathele’ by Tman Xpress plays out over the soundsystem, a chef appears from the back of the club and works his way through the whirling bodies to hand him a box of free food.

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As the music gets louder, I ask Pabi if the neighbours ever complain about the noise. “Complain to who?” she replies. “We know this place. They give back to the community. They do the soup drives in the winter, they do community-driven parties, and they hire people from the community. It would be odd for people to then come and say they’re being too loud.”

Rapper Focalistic arrives at the party with his crew all clad in blue and white. They make an entrance and whip up a hype storm amongst the crowd, posing for photos and chatting to fans. “I think the dancefloor is political. We are changing the way people are seen from Pretoria,” he says, behind white Kurt Cobain-esque sunglasses, silver grills on his teeth. Outside of music, the award-winning artist has a degree in political science. He believes that amapiano is all about redefining and writing positive narratives. “They used to think we were raggedy people, but these are the same kids with dreams who are now touring the world.”

There’s a fashion event tonight in Soweto. It’s organised by the localstreetwear brand, Thesis, and some amapiano DJs are playing. The party is set outdoors, deep in a housing estate. There’s a gathering of people, a soundsystem, a makeshift bar and some couches. Behind the decks stands a 22-year-old DJ called Saucy Khuu. She’s massaging the crowd with popiano bangers (pop-infused amapiano, like Tyla). Their bodies move in unison, like a tricksy puppeteer pulling strings from above. She eventually swaps out with another selector, and heads to get a drink. “People say that when you come to Soweto, you’re coming to the ghetto,” she explains. “I never expected that one day people from other countries would come to see what we do here. It’s actually an honour to celebrate it.”

A screeching noise cuts through the music as a muscle car skids past the party, with a teenager clinging to the roof. Some young daredevils are doing doughnuts on the tarmac in a vehicle that looks as if it might catch fire any minute. The word ‘Thugish’ is emblazoned on the passenger side door.

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The driver pushes the speed higher, drifting and narrowly swerving the audience and the kids in pyjamas who’ve now left their homes to watch. Black smoke and the smell of burnt rubber fill the air as the crowd cheers in a warped euphoria. When the car disappears, the adrenaline settles, and the crowd return to the dancefloor to continue partying into the night.

Although the scene was established before TikTok, the social media site has helped amapiano spread internationally. Viral dance challenges to hits such as Tshwala Bam by TiToM and Yuppe have inspired people from Korea to Sweden to Egypt, to learn the moves and video themselves cutting a rug. The amapiano hashtag on TikTok has gained over 3.3 billion views in the last three years, with hundreds of thousands more for #AmapianoChallenge. A group of schoolkids even took to the stage earlier this year on Holland’s Got Talent and performed an exhilarating amapiano dance routine to the afro-house amapiano fusion song Jealousy by Khalil Harrison and Tyler ICU.

“Dance is revolutionary, and it’s boundless,” dancer Bontle Modiselle explains at one of her dance classes in Maboneng, Johannesburg. Just like the African landscape, she says, dance here is not just one thing. Although she recognises the positives of the global attention on the scene, she still has some reservations. “The monetary value of it all is questionable. It doesn’t come back to us. It goes to big corporations. Unless you become big enough to become a brand, or you partner with different brands. But that’s a tiny percentage of people.” She puts forward her dream of a system that protects dancers, not only in the work they do but also in royalties and remuneration if their dances go viral. That way, she says, the artist isn’t the only one benefiting.

With dance being such a big part of the subculture, there’s a whole range of moves and styles associated with it. The Dakiwe, named after a song of the same name, requires you to lean back, bop your chin and roll your shouldsers. There’s uMlando, also named after a song, in which you connect your heels and hips and move them together. The Zekethe is a routine of a lunge forward, shimmy backwards, a kick and a squat. That’s usually performed to this tune by Busta 929 and Mpura. These are three of the many moves you’ll see being performed at parties, youth clubs, and on social media.

There’s a group of young people dancing across the street from Bontle’s studio. On the pavement next to a busy main road, the friends are circled-up and crackling with laughter. They radiate joy as they make up routines to the faint sound of music from a bluetooth speaker. One teenager points to her phone and films as they dance together in sync.

Later that week, there’s a live panel discussion at a bar in Rosebank, central Johannesburg. Producer and DJ, KMAT, is one of the guest speakers. She rocks a red afro and matching red biker jacket: cool, calm but doggedly passionate as she talks about her journey as an artist. “It was very hard when I was getting into the industry. It was before the whole viral dancing thing started. Men didn’t want competition, they didn’t want girls coming in and shaking things up. I had to fight for my gigs.” The male dominance in amapiano mirrors other electronic music scenes all over the world, but KMAT is one of the many women who have staked their claim in recent years, signing to Warner Music Africa and with her hit song ‘Mkhukhu (MMK)’ clocking up millions of streams.

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“Even if I dress sexy, I know I can play, and I want people to see me for my talent. I’m a girl’s girl. We need to work together to do the most. I try to help as many female artists as I can.”

Other leading female artists in amapiano include Uncle Waffles, who landed a BBC Radio 1 residency in 2022, and DBN Gogo who played Coachella the same year. On top of that, the biggest managers in the scene are women too – namely Thulani Keupilwe who manages Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa, and Reba Shai who manages Focalistic.

On my final night in Jozi, I’m invited to a Spotify Africa awards ceremony and party to celebrate 10 years of amapiano. There, producer and DJ, Lady Du, wins an award for being the highest-streamed woman on Spotify’s Amapiano Grooves playlist. The 33-year-old is from the Vosloorus township, east of Johannesburg, and has been making music since she was nine years old. She takes to the stage and with tears in her eyes, grabs the mic and says, “All I have to say is; use what you have, to become who you want to be.”

Listen to the Spotify Amapiano Grooves playlist here.

Jak Hutchcraft is a freelance journalist. Follow him on Instagram.

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