Is South Africa's Kwaito Hip-Hop?

Today Kelefa Sanneh of the New York Times profiles internaional hip-hop and explores how the genre twists once it hits other lands. Two examples- London's grime, and South Africa's kwaito.

Wikipedia explains kwaito as:

...a South African form of house music that originated in Johannesburg in the mid 1990's. The beat in Kwaito is slower than that usually found in house music and contains melodius African loops, deep bass and often vocals. Charactaristicly the vocals are male and shouted or chanted and for the most part not sung.

In other words, African dance music with raps over it. Somebody, please school me - other than the rapping, what makes kwaito so "hip-hop"?

I remeber reading in magazines that the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Rage Against the Machine were hip-hop because of their rapping. I disagree. If anything it's the beat that makes something hip-hop music, as I've explained before.

Kwaito doesn't pass the beat test, and I wonder if the artists even see themselves as, or being influenced by rappers.

Comments

[obifromsouthlondon]

talking of kwaito there's a new east african sound called Bongo flava. They call it hiphop. they all sound dancehall flavoured to me.

Now grime is a different kettle.

[Donnell Bell]

I haven't heard kwaito before, but it takes more than a beat to be classified as Hip Hop. In rap or hip hop music, (what's so great about it!) we have always had some tracks that were "cross over" beats where we used Rock, Soul, Jazz, Funk, etc. We have even used Washington D.C.'s go-go music and simple House beats. I want to know how are they flowing over the music?

[mustafa maluka]

kwaito is not hiphop. we have a thriving local hiphop scene in south africa and the two genres are extremely different. kwaito beats are based on house music. grime is more hiphop-like. as a "hiphop heart(not head)" i feel grime but not kwaito.

[Inyambo]

Kwaito is not Hip-Hop the only simmirality between the two is their both supported by young black people.

[maliq the lovechild]

kwaito is not hip hop. this label is used just a packaging gimmick marketing scam to better make it (kwaito) acceptable to the international community since, well, "everybody loves amerikkkan culture."

[cherryl with 2 R's]

i agree that it's not really hip hop but yeah its marketed that way. and from what i understand about kwaito, it is immensely popular and is considered like the "bling bling" music or whatever, like there is a definite parallel in other countries of the US's "underground vs. commercial" thing. Groups from SA like Black Noise are considered "underground" and the Kwaito folks are like Cash money and isht...like they idolize that style of american rap and get a lot of play on certain SA radio stations while the underground groups like Black Noise and POC (Prophets of da city) struggle to get airplay...and a lot of the underground group's stuff is still on like cassettes tapes they sell hand to hand, while SA record companies in the big cities embrace kwaito and its artists, some of whom have gone platinum without even selling CDs outside of SA...

[str8 frm Jozi]

True, kwaito's not hip hop. ther's actually a bit of animosity between some kwaito and hip hop artists over here coz of (amongst other things, i believe) perceptions of kwaito artists that hip hop artists grew up with 'more comfortable' lives.

[Toto]

Perhaps it should be considered, lets face it with all genera's there are sub-genera's i.e. Gangster, Getto, underground etc all are types of Hip Hop. In my opinion if they flow in a hip hop beat/breakbeat style no matter what compilation of different sound, they send a msg in a very similar manor , yes sometimes not in english, addressing all current and self identification issues and in every other possible way they portray they Hip Hop culture. If it flows like hip hop bops like hip hop and dresses hip hop it's probably?

[stuka]

kwaito is not hip hop and doesn`t wanna be hip hop.most people who are into hip hop here are from the suburbs

[Buy Viagra]

The word 'kwaito' is an Isicamtho term from the Gauteng townships and encompasses styles that range from guz, d'gong, and isgubhu to swaito.[2] The word originates from the Afrikaans word 'kwaai', which traditionally means strict or angry although in its more common and contemporary use 'kwaai' is a translation of the loose English term 'cool'. Since its origins, similar to Isicamtho, kwaito lead a post-apartheid township subculture into the mainstream.