Booming: MFR Souls’ Tumelo Nedondwe, aka Maero, says the duo DJs pioneered the sound of amapiano, but others also claim that honour. Photo: Oupa Bopape/Gallo Images
I live in the East Rand township of Tembisa and our house is situated close to the main road. Minibus taxis that go to town and school pass by my house, which is how I keep tabs on the latest songs, thanks to their booming sound systems.
It’s 2019 and there is this new sound that vibrates our windows and I am not particularly sure what to make of it. I don’t hate it, I just don’t know how to process it.
All I know is that it is loud and it’s packed with a lot of elements, and it makes people happy. Semi Tee’s Labantwana Ama Uber song, which features Miano and Kammu Dee, was the Sister Bettina of the time. Everyone was singing and dancing to that song and I was still not too sure what I was listening to.
I took it as a phase that it would be on its way out as fast as a passing taxi. Little did I know that the genre had been brewing since 2010.
In the beginning
The genesis of amapiano is Pretoria where it has been pioneered by artists like Cooper, Focalistic, Chicco, Mellow and Sleazy. That is the general agreement.
But, like most foundation tales, there is never complete agreement. Tumelo Nedondwe, also known as Maero and one half of the DJ duo MFR Souls, boldly tells the Mail & Guardian that they pioneered the amapiano sound in Katlehong, east of Johannesburg.
“We did not know that the sound would be this big,” he says. “We had little apprehension about the sound and how people would receive it so we decided to give some of our songs to DJs like Stokie and Jaivane to name a few and they were instrumental in elevating the sound and getting people more accustomed to this genre.”
Maero says they were criticised and told that this was just a phase that would end soon.
“We used the criticism as fuel to push us forward, which was when we started seeing that people were loving the sound as if it was something different,” he says.
MFR Souls would go on to tour in countries such as Australia, Botswana and Netherlands, to name a few, where Maero says they would be overwhelmed because “the crowd would sing songs on our set word for word”.
Amapiano doesn’t confine people to just one conventional sound. It caters for different people under various sub-genres such as private school piano, amapiano laced with Bacardi, which is a sound synonymous with Pretoria, as well as soulful piano.
Maero says the vast subgenres allow for healthy competition.
“The last thing we want is for people to think that the culture is full of people who are lazy. Which is why the many subgenres create a platform for healthy competition and for individuals to be creative and put out the best work possible,” he says. “Other genres are already fighting ipiano, which is why quality and originality are important.”
In upcoming projects with the likes of Kabza De Small and Mr JazziQ, Maero says they are bringing back the sound they had been producing when the beast was born, because many of their fans have been complaining about missing that sound.
And so I asked Maero if he would back my claim of saying amapiano has taken over the world or if is it just wishful thinking.
He proudly says yes.
“We have shows coming up in the USA soon, and I still can’t get used to the fact that amapiano has reached that far.”
MFR Souls have come a long way and Maero says he looks back at where they started, in his mother’s front room in Katlehong.
“Amapiano is going to go very far. We have seen how the genre has opened up opportunities for many people, we have millionaires now because of amapiano, and people from South Africa support and love the sound so it will still be around for a very long time,” he says.
The reach
To think that fear almost deprived the world of such a revolutionary moment reminds me of what Jimmy Iovine, founder of Interscope Records and Beats Electronics, said: “Fear is a powerful thing. It’s got a lot of firepower. If you can figure out a way to wrestle that fear to push you from behind rather than to stand in front of you, that’s very powerful.”
These are clear signs that there is a hunger for amapiano on an international scale. With 1.9 billion streams in 2022 and streams outside of sub-Saharan Africa growing by more than 563% on Spotify in the last two years, it is safe to claim that amapiano is making inroads on dancefloors and cell phones, or wherever people stream music from.
In a recent article the music industry trends website Hypebot used one of electronic genre’s hottest acts, De Small, as an example of its meteoric rise. He now boasts 1.25 million Spotify monthly listeners. The top cities include Lagos (42 300 Spotify monthly listeners), Nairobi (30 000) and London (29 000 listeners).
It adds: “The past three years have been pivotal for amapiano, as it went from a nascent genre to being performed at some of the biggest stages in the world. Spotify playlists and social media played a significant role in amplifying amapiano’s reach during the pandemic lockdown, garnering an international fanbase growing by the day.”
The global music scene has seen Chris Brown laying a verse on Monalisa, a song by Lojay and Sarz — an amapiano song with a dash of Afrobeats. Then there was Beyoncé sampling Uncle Waffles’ Tanzania on her Renaissance World Tour and Rozonda Thomas hopping on the mnike challenge by Tyler ICU.
These international moments are endless. But there is something special about those moments on social media or when I am making small talk with my neighbour as a booming taxi passes by. Its soundtrack allows me to elevate our conversation to, “Do you know Beyoncé was dancing to this song on social media?”
And there is the joy it is bringing people everywhere. I asked my teenage neighbour, who does amapiano TikTok challenges on her mother’s stoep, what the genre means to her. “For the first time, we have something that belongs to us, that we understand and love, that’s what amapiano means to me,” she said.