shangaan electro x dazed digital

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I wrote a piecce about Shangaan Electro back when I first started this blog 3 or 4 years ago or when ever it was. I  find the breakneck speed of the marimba quite hypnotic and bearing in mind the importance of dance it is a fascinating genre of new music. I came across this video by chance tonight and I'm so pleased to see the popularity of Shangaan Electro is still there and with that the orange boiler suits, wacky masks and some seriously funky bum-shaking.

tshetsha boys - nwa pfundla

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shangaan electro

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Shangaan electro is  a DIY music scene from the Limpopo area of South Africa. It's characterised by super-fast marimba beats at upwards of 180 bpm on MIDI keyboards and no bass. Ordinarily, a beat pattern that fast would be fingernails down a blackboard to me but it's actually very melodic and quite hypnotic.

The Shangaan scene is about 5 or 6 years old and in the last year or so has certainly attracted worldwide attention and this has concerned some militant elements who see the attention as cultural voyeurism. I did read one comment describing it as "...yet another example of Western scavenging off indigenous black music." I don't buy this at all. Granted - the sound is definitely South African but the marimba isn't African, the instruments aren't African. It's also pretty much impossible nowadays for any new music genre to be totally 'linear' in its development inasmuch as developed free from outside cultural influence. 

The Shangaan Malcolm Mclaren/Anthony H Wilson is a chap by the name of Richard Mthethwa aka Dog who produces and releases the music for the biggest named musicians including Tshe Tsha Boys who dress as if they should be in Slipknot with masks and boiler suits as de rigeur. "Dog" has been key to the success of Shangaan electro but rather refreshingly, he remains commited to the community that has made him wealthy. Perhaps Malcolm McLaren is an unfair comparison in that case.

The production values are a little shaky but without patronising the artists, I think this adds to the feel of the music and I suspect that some of the spontaneity would be lost with endless (re)mixing and editing. Lyric-wise, it's the universal tale of men/women/money troubles. Dance is as much a part of the music as the tunes themselves and the videos remind me of Northern Soul/breakdancing cameos but with lots of hip shaking from the women and stomping from the men. There's a lovely surrealness to some of the moves though. One video I watched had a male dance pretending to be a dog and miming peeing on a tree!

Having spent a bit of time in South Africa, I'm well aware the importance music and dance has in black society and so I'm not surprised to see that it has permeated through to religious songs of worship.  Here we have Foster Manganyi, a pastor in Limpopo with one of my favourite Shangaan tracks.  His music tends to be more sparse and mournful, well...solemn, perhaps but given his day job I'm not surprised.  You can hear his album, Ndze Teke Riendzo, for free from here: we7.com/FosterManganyi

Ndzi To Tiyisela — I Will Keep On Praying