062: Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music from South Africa, by Various Artists

Various Artists (South Africa)
Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music from South Africa (2010)
12 tracks, 65 minutes
Spotify • iTunes

Despite how I love so much of the music from the African continent, I have a hard time with South African music. I do try, but a lot of it just doesn’t hit my ears right. I find a lot of it to be just a bit too fluffy – I don’t know why and I can’t even really define what I mean by ‘fluffy.’ It's something to do with the way the melodies and harmonies are constructed that just doesn’t work for me. Entirely my problem, of course, there’s nothing about South African music that’s bad in general, I’m just weird like that. So when I find music from South Africa that hits me right, I’m always stoked to dive in; I feel like that about Shangaan Electro.

Shangaan Electro is a scene that revolves around the Limpopo region of South Africa, but it’s spread all over the country. The style is named after the Shangaan people of that region and the music and dance is inspired by their traditional culture. In the Electro version, though, everything is pushed to 11: where Shangaan music is fast, Shangaan Electro is faster; where Shangaan dances are energetic, Shangaan Electro dances are frenetic and completely wild.

It’s all based around drum machines and synthesisers with a range of brilliantly tacky timbres. There’s a particular focus on marimba sounds that hark back to the traditional styles, and the vocals over the top of it all can reflect anything from traditional song to soul, R’n’B and hip-hop. Every track has those short, circular melodies and heavy drum patterns that I seem to love so much, the ones that feel like they could go on for hours. It reminds me quite a bit of mchiriku music from Tanzania, like we heard from Jagwa Music in January – the aesthetics are similar but they’re approached from a different sort of direction, and there’s a little more of a conscious production element with Shangaan Electro. Every aspect of the music is precision engineered to make it the danciest possible, and personally I find it wonderful to exercise to, for the same reason – it never stops, so you don’t want to either.

I know I’ve not really talked about this album in particular, but that's a testament to it. Released on the Honest Jon’s label, the album is a compilation of Shangaan Electro hits, and it was the first time the style got any real exposure in Europe. It’s basically a sampler, a who’s-who of the stars of the genre. The compilers did a great job at introducing the style and its different facets in one succinct album, and it really makes you feel clued-in in just over an hour, simply by listening. So if what I wrote up there sounds at all interesting to you, let this album be your first port-of-call.