If anybody has a passing interest in kwasa kwasa/rhumba music, then listen up.
It all began in the early 2000s when the likes of Franco, Alfredo Mos and Nata Capricorn bombarded the local music scene with this type of music. One could clearly tell that they weren’t the only ones who had become overwhelmingly obsessed with Shauri Yako, Khanda Bongo Man, and Kofi Olomide.
Towards the middle of the last decade, Botswana played host to too many live performances. The likes of Chris Manto 7 and Jeff Matheatau had taken kwasa kwasa/rhumba music to another level.
They meant business.
So by then, almost everybody was bumping their head to kwasa kwasa/ rhumba music.
Its impact was so powerful that it still has die-hard followers to this day. You’ll have seen them from afar.
Kwasa kwasa and rhumba heads still have their distinguished type of snazzy, glamorous dress code, or is it regalia. Most prefer to stick to the bebop punk hairstyle, which is an s-curl that fades to the side.
Some get perms or ‘relax’ their hair and get plaits with extensions. They also wear dark sunglasses along with gold jewellery, which includes earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings and watches.
They wear Mexican shirts, which they tuck into their picked up, colourful flamboyant pants which are so flexible it seems like they were made out of curtain material. Along with their belts, the shoes are strictly sharp points, made out of bright white dyed crocodile leather. The women are also easy to spot, because they like wearing tight pants and half tops most of the time.
When it comes to dancing to this type of ‘African rock music’, it takes more than machismo and passion.
It’s not like western rock music, where one flips their hair back and forth and says they’re dancing. You see, in order to become a true authority, one needs to be good at hip swiveling. It needs an over flow of waistline charisma and sexual ambiguity, just like the jaw dropping women dancers you see on Slizers music videos.
“Kwasa kwasa and rhumba music is loud, it has an amplified, dirtier and more urgent sound,” says Johnny Kobedi, a folklore artist who plays his guitar at the Gaborone Bus Rank. “It’s like Stika Sola’s music on amphetamines,” he added.
Nowadays, to prove that this music is no longer popular or appealing to Batswana, it’s quite difficult to come across, unless you hang out in Mogoditshane with soldiers at Chez Ntemba or at any one of the BDF messes.
Is it because the genre is not originally produced by Batswana as the creators or audiences have now shifted to playing traditional music.
What brought about the sudden death of kwasa kwasa and rhumba music?
Baabina, 25, is a self-proclaimed rhumba king in Botswana and he says he released his kwasa kwasa album in 2005.
He says his album didn’t do that well because it was being pirated on the market.
“I was also being swindled by phoney promoters who used me and paid me peanuts,” he said. “My album is being reloaded and people must watch this space because it’s coming back with a bang.”
Douglas Maloba, a maintenance man at the University of Botswana, says as much as he loves the music, he now prefers Culture Spears and the likes of Shumba Ratshega and other upcoming traditional music artists.
“Their music is original and one can prove this by the international shows they get called for,” he said. “If you look at local rhumba artists, they don’t get international recognition because the music is not originally from Botswana,” he added.
