South African Music

Gqom erupted from Durban’s townships with a visceral pulse—dark, minimal, percussive, and hypnotic. Emerging in the early 2010s, it leaned less on song structure and more on rhythm as architecture: broken-beat kicks, rattling snares, haunted vocal chops, and sudden drops that feel like a car cresting a hill. The music’s DNA is unapologetically local: parties, taxis blasting tracks, informal studios, and a culture of file sharing that turned neighborhood bangers into national talking points before traditional gatekeepers knew what hit them.

When you think of South Africa, you might imagine scenic landscapes, a turbulent political history, or the warmth of Ubuntu. But over the past two decades, another export has been quietly shaking dance floors across the world: South African house music. From smoky township clubs in Soweto to upscale lounges in Berlin and beach festivals in Rio, this genre—rooted in local experience yet global in its resonance—has become an unstoppable force.

This is the story of how South African house music, in its various flavors, has grown from a grassroots phenomenon into a global movement.