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.