Kwaito

What it is

Somebody in Soweto in about 1993 pitched a Chicago house record down on a belt-drive turntable and liked what it did to the bass. That is the founding move, told slightly differently by everyone who was there, and the music that came out of it is the first South African dance genre of the democratic era. The tempo sits near 100, slow enough to walk to. The vocals are half-sung and half-spoken in Isicamtho, the township slang of the Witwatersrand, and they sit right on top rather than floating above. Arthur Mafokate, Boom Shaka, Mdu Masilela, TKZee and Mandoza built it, and everything South African in this file traces back through it, gqom and amapiano included.

What it sounds like

Thick, mid-heavy and unhurried. A soft kick with a long tail, a hand clap that is usually a stock machine sample doubled with a room recording, and a bass synth playing a two bar riff that the whole record is arranged around. Congas and a shaker fill everything between. The keys are cheap, deliberately so, one organ patch and one string patch off an early nineties workstation. Vocals are group vocals more often than solos, chanted, close-miked, and barely processed. Reverb is used on the claps and almost nothing else.

Key elements

• Tempo as the whole ideaHouse arrangements at around 100 beats per minute. Nothing else about the drum kit is unusual; the speed is what makes the bassline sit the way it does.
• A kick with a pushThe beats are covered, but an extra kick lands on the a of 2 and later on the a of 3, so the floor gets a shove that a straight four never gives it.
• The bass riffTwo bars, written before anything else, and repeated for the length of the record. It carries the melody, so the keys can stay as simple as two chords.
• Group vocalsChanted phrases in Isicamtho, several voices at once, mixed level with the drums instead of above them. The hook is a crowd, not a singer.
• Congas answering the clapSix uneven hand drum hits a bar, deliberately busier than the kit and resolving differently in the second bar, so the groove reads as played rather than programmed.

How to get them

• Slow it down properlyDo not just set the tempo to 100. Pitch a full drum loop down and keep the artefacts, because the darkened hats and the stretched kick tail are part of what the ear identifies.
• KickLong decay, soft knee, no click. Tune it to the root of the bass riff and let it overlap the sixteenth after it rather than stopping cleanly.
• ClapLayer a machine clap with a recording of two or three people clapping in a room, delay the second by about 12 milliseconds, and print them together.
• BassOne saw, filter open about halfway, portamento on. Write two bars and resist changing it. Every arrangement decision after this is about getting out of its way.
• Swing0.57. At this tempo a straight sixteenth grid sounds like a slowed house record rather than kwaito, and the difference is entirely in the shaker.
• VocalsTrack the same phrase three or four times with different people if you can, pan them narrow, and compress the group hard so it arrives as one voice.

Reference points

Arthur Mafokate, Boom Shaka, Mdu Masilela, TKZee, Mandoza, Trompies, Brenda Fassie's later records, and the Kalawa Jazmee catalogue. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements or as anyone to imitate.