Who Gets to Live In the House That Afro Built?

Afro-house is the moment. It moves undetected, arrives loud and proud at residencies in Ibiza, soundtracks spaza shops and backyard parties in South Africa — in townships on the East Rand and in Soweto — and spills its beats into posh metropoles like Sandton and the beachfronts of Cape Town. Afro-house, used here as an umbrella term encompassing variants such as Afro-tech and 3-Step, is abundant, and the data correlate. 

The genre recorded a 778 percent year-on-year increase in downloads in 2025, reaching about 6.7 million listeners, while also climbing into the top five most-searched genres on platforms like Beatport. Streaming has scaled alongside this rise, with leading tracks — like Black Coffee and David Guetta's "Drive" and Keinemusik's "Thandaza" — pulling in hundreds of millions of plays, while curated playlists attract large followings. Its audience now spans Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, where music consumption is expanding quickly. Within a global electronic music market valued at nearly $13 billion, Afro-house is deep in its era as an influential driver of cultural reach and industry growth.

The current attention being directed towards the music has been a long time in the making, with different players across the world — from DJ Satelite to Boddhi Satva, Osunlade to Black Coffee; from compilation albums by the likes of Oskido, to evergreen songs like Nick Holder's "Summer Daze" — lending their hand towards building the foundation, beat by beat. But in 2020, Zakes Bantwini's "Osama" arrived, a biblical Moses sent to lead the flock gathered at the altar of Afro to the promised land, where beats bump nonstop, and all worries dissipate.

"We did 'Osama' in the evening, I think it was a Friday evening [in the thick of COVID-19 restrictions], and we did [Karyendasoul's] ‘Imali’ in the morning, around 11 AM," he tells OkayAfrica. "Those two songs introduced Afro-house on the radio in South Africa, and also as an alternative to amapiano. Which is the same thing as what Durban kwaito music did at that time, which is to introduce a new sound, a different sound."

Zakes Bantwini was around during the years when the genre was finding its footing. As L'vovo Derango's manager, he took the artist from a budding little-known name to national acclaim, and gave Durban kwaito its name. As a solo artist, he had immense success with "Wasting MyTime." And around the same period, Liquideep were doing their own fusion of vocals over house beats.

Speaking to OkayAfrica before their appearance at the Corona Sunsets festival this weekend — one of the many gigs they've booked post the extended break they took — they paint a picture of the scene during that time. Says Ryzor, the producer and deejay: "Back then, there were not a lot of sub-genres of dance music. What I like about South Africans, then and today, is that you can have [a variety of] acts on stage, at the same show."

There's a general consensus about what Afro is, and it usually goes something like this: dance music that infuses African elements into Western sounds. But in and of itself, the descriptor has holes. Africa is broad, and Africanisation is not the same as indigenisation, especially if we're thinking towards a praxis that embraces how the music is consumed continent-wide, from Cape Town to Luanda, Johannesburg to Accra, Maseru to Nairobi, and Harare to Lagos.

Part of the problem is the lack of a language and a model that not only theorises the tenets of Afro but also builds infrastructure and consensus around ownership. Some artists, while prolific, fail to articulate their process, their motives, their inspiration in ways that translate — either because they don't know they can get people to do that for them, or because their world isn't constructed to make space for that way of thinking.

"Unless we travel and go overseas and tell the people about [our sound], nobody's [gonna do it," says Zakes Bantwini.

Women like Jackie Queens, a musician herself, whose independent releases, like Enoo Napa's remix of "Conqueror," have been so impactful that they've arguably shaped the current landscape of Afro, have been theorising, writing, and speaking on panels about the issues in the scene — from the strong patriarchal hold that makes it a boys' club, to the gentrification that has made European collectives like Keinemusik some of the biggest Afro artists worldwide. She is also responsible for Desiree, who’s been taking noteworthy stances, especially regarding event attendance. 

The other part is an ecosystem that favours depoliticisation, a kind of sequestration from Afro's very Black, very political roots. It is the price Black music pays for global expansion, a tit-for-tat that demands you give your soul and your consciousness away for a chance at the world. The message is: you aren't allowed to show up in your fullness.

But one can't decouple a movement from its radical traditions without losing the soul. South Africans heard Frankie Knuckles' records in the '80s, just as apartheid was breathing its final breaths — killing Black and Brown people aplenty as it writhed and wilted, making way for a new, Black-led democracy. House music soundtracked the resistance, became the fuel energising revolutionaries in those final years. Before more blood spilled. Before sunset clauses changed the course of liberation. Before Chris Hani's warnings about a ruling class that co-opts the oppressor's tactics came to pass.

In this environment, where the liberatory politics of dancing are divorced from the body, it isn't extraordinary that there are people who don't see any problem.

Deejay-producers like Da Capo believe that Afro-house hasn't lost its authenticity. As he told OkayAfrica last year: "[To] someone who has been in the space for such a long time, I feel that Afro-house is currently growing in a positive direction. Take a look at how many Afro-house producers from South Africa are expanding their reach globally. Back in 2011, 2012, and 2013, you would have never found any South Africans making moves all over the world. It was super limited. Currently, everyone can have a slice of the pie. As long as you're pushing the sound into the right spaces, we'll appreciate you and show you love."

Others, like Boddhi Satva, have been particular about ensuring the roots of Afro-house are not co-opted. Responding to an Instagram post titled The Uncomfortable Truth Behind Afro House's Viral Rise, he cautioned against revisionism, pointing out the many global touchpoints that have converged to shape the sound.

"First of all, Afro-house is about 50 years old," he began. "It had many declinations, it had different sequences. I am part of the sequence that shaped the sound as you've known it for the past two decades or so. But I'm not alone. It was many pioneers in different countries — in Europe, in America, etc. We all developed a sound that gave birth to what you now call Afro-house. [It was really looked down upon by many artists who are now claiming to be Afro-house. I mean, great, they finally saw the truth. But it took for the West to embrace the sound [...] for them to be like, this is where the money's at, let's just go [...] I get it, business is business, I'm a business guy. But when we're talking business, there's gotta be a little bit of ethic (sic) as well, and history must be told properly."

The question of how mainstream media perceives Black electronic music still lingers. Coverage often tilts toward the salacious, flattening the culture to something base, as if genres like rap, dancehall, gqom, and Afro-house aren't "real" music unless filtered through jazz or orchestration.

DJ Chrisse C's musing on the supposed death of Amapiano — and subsequent rise in Afro-house, as if the two aren't part of the same pipeline that informs Black music — is worth revisiting. As she notes: "As Afrohouse has entered the microwave of popular culture, we are witnessing the rising production of diluted, churnable and formulaic chord music being improperly attributed to Afrohouse. It lacks soul, it lacks rhythm, and it lacks cultural context, but it persists because it sells."

What comes next is already complicating things. Producers like Caiiro have admitted to using AI-generated vocals. Shimza was embroiled in controversy after he claimed that a "fake artist" used AI to recreate and release a song of his from snippets they found online. "This is the only song on their profile," he tweeted. Attempts to get comments from Shimza went unanswered.

"It's all tools, my man," says Ziyon. "Things can be destructive, and things can be beautiful. So now we've got a really smart tool, but it's our [responsibility] to decide how we're gonna use it. I feel like it would be a little bit unwise to push against [the usage of generative AI in music]."

He does acknowledge the need for guardrails, "so that it doesn't become something that overruns us. We're always gonna progress, that's what life is - progression. We don't look at it as something that can take from us; we look at it as something to use. And we decide how we use it."

Rayzor, a software developer by profession, errs on the side of caution. He contrasts the growth and adoption of generative AI with the rise of Facebook after Myspace's dominance, and notes the current pace of technological progress. "That can be unsettling, that can be unnerving - we're not sure where this thing is gonna take us. The conversation that we're having in music is happening all around us. We will see, this year is going to be very interesting. But on the upside, what Ziyon said makes sense - this is a tool."

Afro-house is growing. But the terms of that growth are still being negotiated and debated, even as the music becomes one of the most widely consumed genres at the moment. The road ahead is going to be interesting to watch.