I was browsing through Fact Magazine this afternoon and came to find they had recently written up an article about South Africa's kwaito music movement, which has come into the limelight recently thanks to Warp Records signing and releasing DJ Mujava's anthem 'Township Funk.' Kwaito relies on stripped down house-friendly melodies over disrupted, broken beat tribal rhythms as it's base and DJs around the world are starting to take notice. A highlight of our recent trip to Seattle's Decibel Festival was the tandem of Michael Mayer and Superpitcher throwing down their own unique 'Township Funk' remix. You can also hear Stenchman's dubstep remix of the tune HERE as well as L-Vis1990's kwaito dub remix of the track HERE.

Here is an except from the Fact Magazine article 'Kwaito invasion?' Full article text can be found HERE at the FactMagazine website. Great Read:

"In a car park amid Pretoria's high-rise housing, I'm watching something special unfold: a DJ has set up on a table, and as he puts on a record by Mujava , all kinds of people drift over and drop what they're doing to dance. It's a fairly amazing sight: they twist their torsos and arms as if trying to squeeze through a tennis racket. They can make their legs turn to rubber at will. The music is even more interesting: with loping snares hitting anywhere but on the beat and a springy shuffle, as if roughly hacked from concrete and metal, the track is familiar to everyone from taxi journeys.

It's time to come clean, though: I've never been to South Africa, I'm just watching the video for 'Township Funk' and it's pretty obvious the above scenario is staged. Thanks to a release in the UK by This Is Music, it's first record in a while I've seen anyone run to a DJ to find out about. Even in a climate that rapidly adopts, processes and recycles other countries' dance music, the attention that 'Township Funk' has been getting is remarkable.

So why are people giving it attention? Partly it must be down to rhythmic novelty: against all the house and techno wallpaper, it's fun to hear the neat grid set down by disco disrupted by beats from other lineages. Mujava, who claims not to have any other influences, simply calls his music "house with an African beat". But in South Africa house isn't particularly distinct from other urban music, known overall as kwaito. Samkelo Ngwenya of kwaito.co.uk – a London-based website dedicated to increasing this music's audience – explains that dancehall, ragga and hip-hop are huge influences on South African artists. It trickles down to Mujava's end of the spectrum, which is usually specifically called mzansi.

Something else that might occur to electronic music fans is the similarity Mujava's sound bears to early nineties 'bleep 'n' bass' from Sheffield and Leeds [something you can read more about in Simon Reynolds' FACT primer]. It's another comparison Mujava seems uninterested in, offering only the following: "I love any type of music. Elements [of bleep] are similar to mine, which proves that music is the international language we all use to express ourselves." And in case you wondered, he doesn't use any of the same out-of-date music-making boxes, listing his equipment as "a PC with music software".