“There Are Different Variants At This Moment,” Focalistic Defines Amapiano! Focalistic recently had a chat with Apple Music 1’s Dotty for the show’s ‘Worldwide Wednesday’. The Amapiano star talked to Dotty about the origins of Amapiano music in his South Africa, the rise of the genre across the continent and the global awareness of South African music.
Check out what he had to say below.
On the origins of Amapiano…
“In South Africa, we used to have this genre called Kwaito, which was rough and more gangster. And Amapiano took Kwaito and mixed it with house music, which can be sweet, melodic. And there’s also Bacardi, which is a genre from Pretoria, which is a smaller genre but it’s about rough drum patterns, making sure people dance. And I think Amapiano is a nice blend of all of that. It’s become different things now, it can be sweet on its own, it can be gangster, it can still be rough and still have the heavy patterns. But, all in all, it just sounds like the streets of South Africa, if I’m being honest with you. It’s a sound that sounds like the streets of South Africa.“
On the Amapiano sound spreading across the continent…
“There are different variants at this moment. I think it’s because it’s travelled so fast. Thanks to Apple Music, to the internet. A lot of people caught the vibes and I’m embracing them. For me, it’s always about collaboration over competition. If we want Amapiano to be the big genre that it is, one day Amapiano has to win a Grammy. So it’s a sound that started in South Africa and now it’s being embraced worldwide, it’s being embraced in the continent. And that’s why we are able to travel, see different countries and collaborate with different African artists. And I think that it’s a good thing for Amapiano. People have their own different variants of it. And it’s just growing from a small thing to it being made in Ghana. I’ve heard that in Nigeria, five of the Top 10 songs are Amapiano on the Apple Music chart. So the movement is moving.”
