The Shangaan 90s: Disco or Kwaito?
What’s in a name? Well, when it comes to emerging and evolving genres of popular music, it turns out, quite a lot. Terms like “jazz,” “rock,” “r&b” and even “hip-hop” have been around long enough to be widely understood as big umbrellas with countless sub-genres in their shadows. But in the heat of creation, artists, labels, DJs and journalists can be very protective, even territorial, in their advocacy for particular labels. Sometimes these disputes are merely a matter of ego, but they can also stand in for larger issues of ethnicity and social class.