A beginner's guide to South African Amapiano with DJ mOma – triple j – ABC News

Increasingly South Africa is gaining global attention for its unique take on house music.
Artists like Drake and Stormzy are working with South African stars Black Coffee and Sho Madjozi to give their music a fresh new sound. One of the more recent developments in South African House Music is the emergence of Amapiano, nicknamed 'The Yanos', which is characterised by infectious mid-tempo grooves.
Famed New York DJ mOma describes the genre as a "combination of elements of South African House programmed at slower BPMs (110-116BPM currently) with jazzy piano, organ and guitar chords and solos, Kwaito basslines, percussions from another local subgenre of house known as Bacardi, and some soul stirring vocals."
Like many of the new developments in South African music it started in the Townships before filtering into the mainstream. "Depending on who you ask, it was created in the townships of Johannesburg or Pretoria around 2012," DJ mOma continues.
"It was spread via WhatsApp groups before it gained national notoriety and then it pretty much took over all the South African airwaves in mid 2019."
"I personally discovered it the first time I visited South Africa in 2016. My uber driver was playing the sickest selection of un-Shazam'able tunes so I asked him to ID everything for me, which he gladly did because I tipped him very well."
Check out this week's Kick On for a deep dive into the driving mid-tempo grooves coming from South Africa's emerging Amapiano scene with help from DJ mOma and local Afro-House expert Kristelle Morin.
"I was immediately attracted to [the genre] because it felt to me like a hybrid of all my favourite musical genres: soulful house, deep house, Afrohouse, Afrobeats, jazz, soul, R&B," he explains. "You can say [it was a combo of] just about everything I love, except it was missing an element of hip-hop."
"Now fast forward to 2018, Amapiano started incorporating Kwaito style rhyming which is hip-hop at its core and some of the biggest Yanos records of 2019 included MCs: Labantwana Ama Uber, Lorch, Sandtown. This trend is continuing currently in 2020 with massive tunes by Focalistic and Kamo Mphela.
"Amapiano aggregates all the music I love and distills it in the most cohesive, tasteful manner ever, so I fell in love with the genre immediately."
"And seeing that what we do as is DJs is very similar — taking various genres and trying to achieve a cohesive blend for the dancefloor — I thought that producing Amapiano-style vibes would be a natural extension of what I do as a DJ."
If you wanna hear more, mOma recently released a new EP called mOmaPiano which he produced while on lockdown in South Africa early this year; mixing the South African sounds with classic R&B vocals he's given the genre his own unique spin.
We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the lands where we live, learn and work.

source