Maphorisa: “Kabza Was The First Person To Put Vocals On Amapiano”

Maphorisa: “Kabza Was The First Person To Put Vocals On Amapiano”. Amapiano has been in the scene for quite a while now, and with that being it might just become the biggest sound to ever come out of Africa. Much like gqom that came before it, amapiano is a South African style of music born from kwaito, which itself has its roots in Afro-pop and the traditional Zulu musical heritage. Amapiano emerged from the townships of South Africa, particularly Pretoria, a small city just outside Johannesburg.

Amapiano has a slow deep groove, South African-inspired percussion, repetitive, raw vocal style and jazzy samples (from soulful piano to flute). When it started it was just beats and instruments, but amapino pioneers have revolutionalised the sound more.

“When amapiano started, there were no vocals, it was just instruments, underground music and DJs… you wouldn’t find vocals… but when it started evolving, Kabza is the first person to put vocals on it and that’s when trends started changing. There is a song that we did called “Mshove” which revolutionised piano and everyone started hopping on vocals. When we started it was like kwaito-ish, rapping; then we switched it up and started adding singers on it… and that when we started with vocals like hello and stuff like that,” Maphorisa said.

Scorpion Kings dup, a combination of Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa are two people who popularised the amapiano sub-genre and introduced it to countries outside South Africa and in some parts of the world. When Kabza De Small named his 2020 debut album called “I Am The King Of AmaPiano: Sweet & Dust”, the album becam the most streamed South African an album across all genres on Spotify by South African audiences. He tops the list of the most streamed South African artists on Spotify in 2020.

Watch the full interview here: