i've been into house music for a mad long time, and really must say that this african house music is by far my favorite. it's just the sexiest, grooviest, most pumping yet at the same time laid back (thanks to the 105 BPM) sound EVER. and oh ofcourse the vocals are so cool. like hip-house Times TEN.
what is astonishing are the amazing choices these artists and producer make, they seem to get everything right, and JUST right, just perfect.
the songs are full of life, often with sweet melodies, but also very minimal and bare-boned, riding that perfect balance. the production is not show-offish tricked-out, like millions of tech-house producers in the west, to make up for lack of musical ideas -- yeah i'll just do all this unnecessary intricate programming and add a bunch of weird electronic noises and no one will notice that the track will be boring as fuck. WRONG!
Kwaito's thick rolling basslines are just Sublime with capital S (meaning so good it's scary), the drums sounds are fucking perfect -- do you think they sample real drums? you never hear stupid key-board present sounds like you do all the time in western house music... the songs are HUGE and mostly happy and celebritory, to be sure, but they sometimes contain another layer of almost melancholy, of heart-ache, of a joy arrived at through loss... and sometimes that ominous, dark-clouds-on-the-horizon feeling that i love... acheived by a simple sample, or keyboard line. fucking EPIC.
so my question is, HOW or WHY do they get it so fucking perfect? for instance the "diva" vocals NEVER sound cheesy, but always so swee, soulful and good. i don't think it's enough, not to mention cliche(d) and stereotypical, to say that "they" just have it in their blood. maybe that's it, if by "blood" i mean musical heritage, ancestry --
the same ancestry that house music fucking came from in the first place. other than that i'm completely at a loss right now of how a recently liberated people can make unmistakably better house than people who have been doing it for 30 years. ok I don't want to get into any fights: not BETTER necessarily, but let's just say house music of a top-notch quality.
and I'm not even going to mention Afro-Hiphop in this post... fuck!