Saturday morning in Durban, 2am, and both of Club 101’s dimly lit dancefloors are juddering to hypnotic electronic music that has been forged in the city’s surrounding townships. Upstairs, the ...

To call it a wave or anything similarly short-lived is to undermine it. Watching the Gqom Wave documentary, a seeming accompaniment to DJ Maphorisa’s Gqom Wave compilation, one can’t help but notice ...

DJ and producer C-Live has taken to social media to express his frustration, alleging a concept he created a decade ago was taken and used without proper credit ...

Last month's System Focus column on emerging African and Afrodiasporic networks featured Angel-Ho, an artist bringing ballroom and other U.S. club flavors of black and gay origin into new and ...

South Africa (as I covered in a previous profile of House producer Black Coffee) has cemented its place as one of the world’s most innovative producers and exporters of dance music. By now, the ...

While Babes Wodumo’s Wololo may have been the song that kicked down the walls to expose the big sound that is gqom, the sound itself has been thriving underground from as early as 2011 and it was once ...

Distruction Boyz enjoyed a brief flash in the pan with hits like Omunye, which sparked many social media challenges and burnt its way into the minds of all who heard it as a quintessential ear worm.

Gqom, perhaps no more than other forms of music, is a testosterone-driven genre where the record of female participation can sometimes go missing. For example, Bhejane might take credit for uBaba ka ...

Produced by DJ Maphorisa (who also released an accompanying track), Gqom Wave is a 15-minute documentary that sees a panel of producers and deejays discuss the importance of this new movement. While ...

Shiba Melissa Mazaza speaks to South African pioneer DJ Lag about his debut album 'Meeting With The King' and a series of encounters that shaped his path in music and life Aggressive, poetic, artistic ...

Just as I thought it, DJ Tira gave voice to my random thoughts. Why are there so many “boyz” in gqom music? There are the Distruction Boyz (sic) and then there are the Rude Boyz. Sure, DJ Maphorisa is ...

Kwanele Sosibo and Chris Saunders travelled to KwaZulu Natal earlier this year to meet up with some of the pioneers of one of South Africa's most minimal, raw and exhilarating underground dance music ...