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It’s hot! - it’s happening! - it’s Kwaito
- the hottest and newest dance music to come out of South
Africa. When you hear kwaito – you’ll hear Bongo Maffin,
South Africa’s most innovative and vibrant new group.
“Bursting from the Joberg underground” - Bongo Maffin’s
style is firmly rooted in the rhythms of house music. It’s a
“hybrid with vigor” - mixing it up with reggae, dancehall,
rap, contemporary R&B and traditional styles like the bouncy
beat of mbaqanga, gospel and the choral sound of iscathamiya
(made famous by Ladysmith Black Mambazo).
In South Africa Bongo Maffin have been tapped for shows by
international stars such as Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan and
Boyz II Men and performed at Nelson Mandela’s birthday
celebration. They won the South African Music Award for
“Best Kwaito Artist” in 1999 and were the recipients of the
2001 KORA All African music awards for Best African Artist.
In 2001, Central Park Summerstage chose Bongo Maffin to
premiere kwaito music in New York City: “Seeing diehard
clubrats in broad daylight is rare enough. Watching them
shake their asses to Afropop was almost surreal.” (Sound of
the City/Village Voice). The group gave sensational
performances at California’s Reggae on the River and at
Montreal’s Kola Note.
“Bongolution” (reviewed in Billboard Feb. 2002) is the
group’s first international release (Sony Music
International/Lightyear Entertainment). The album has gone
platinum in South Africa. With songs sung in English as well
as native Zulu, “Bongolution” is bound for a worldwide
audience. It has already “succeeded in penetrating the
world’s largest music market.” (The Beat, Los Angeles).
Bongo Maffin are “superb songwriters and performers,”
capable of crafting stylistically divergent tunes. “Twasa”
takes the audience through a formal rite of passage to a
funky house beat. “The Way (Kungakhona)” embraces both
township jive and contemporary electronic rhythms. “Will U
Be There?” thrusts lead vocalist Thandwisa - “a female
powerhouse” - onto the stage with the world’s best R&B
crooners. Appleseed, who hails from Zimbabwe, lends the
flavor of reggae in his “commanding gravel” of a voice while
the “mellifluous” Stoan, who began his musical career as a
singer for the kwaito band Thebe, rounds out the trio. Bongo
Maffin’s expansive and spiritual take on kwaito has been
compared to the Fugees’ broadening of American hip-hop.
“Everything that Bongo Maffin does is about consciousness,”
says Appleseed. “Bongo’s trying to be a musical
representation of the ideas of the African Renaissance.” …
and they’re “out to jack your body !” (*Time Out, New York) |
