Popular music and identity in South Africa

The relationship between popular music and identity in Africa has been widely explored. Much of this scholarship – particularly in the South African context – highlights the urban–rural, and by extension modern–traditional, dynamics of musical performance and the role of Black musicians as cultural brokers within the shifting socio-political contexts of colonial and apartheid South Africa.Footnote ² As Coplan (Reference Coplan1985: 246) notes, understanding cultural transformation requires a social history that connects changing forms of association with evolving modes of expression.

Research on Afrikaans popular music, however, has followed a different trajectory, focusing largely on race and Afrikaner identity.Footnote ³ White Afrikaner cultural formation developed under conditions markedly different from those of Black South Africans and its institutional and social contexts cannot be mapped directly onto Black musical histories.

The picture becomes more complex with the literature on Coloured Afrikaans musicians. While they, of course, also act as cultural brokers – performing identities and mediating social change – the migration narrative that has often been central to analyses of Black South African music is less prominent. Instead, Coloured cultural life emerged from the creolized, urban encounters of Cape Town and its surroundings (see Martin Reference Martin2013).

These differences point to distinct historical trajectories and cultural logics across racialized communities. As such, Afrikaans popular music requires analytical approaches attentive to these divergences rather than assumptions drawn from broader African popular music literature. Fiske’s observation that ‘it is in the production of audiences that the political and social reality of art can be found’ (quoted in Coplan Reference Coplan2001: 107) remains highly relevant – arguably even more so in the streaming era. Streaming platforms, through granular data, algorithmic curation, human editorial decisions and broad accessibility, do not simply reflect cultural audiences; they actively produce them. To understand this evolving relationship, it is necessary to situate the South African case within the broader political economy of global streaming, where patterns of access, representation and algorithmic visibility shape how cultural forms travel and gain value.

The relevance of music streaming in the global and local context

The legal streaming of music on digital platforms has become the most popular way to consume music globally. Maasø and Spilker have divided the development of music streaming into three historical phases: the Unlimited-Access Phase, 2008–11, that promised users unlimited access to vast catalogues of music; the Social-Streaming Phase, 2011–14, that added extra social features where users could interact with each other; and lastly the Algorithmic-Streaming Phase, 2014–present, where services have become hyper-personalized through algorithmic processing of user data (Maasø and Spilker Reference Maasø and Spilker2022: 302–3). How applicable these stages are to the African context is uncertain. In 2025, streaming accounted for 69 per cent of the total global income of the music industry (IFPI 2025: 4), with sub-Saharan Africa reporting the second-fastest growing sector at 22.6 per cent (IFPI 2025: 11). South Africa represented 74.6 per cent of the sub-Saharan market and reported an annual growth rate of 14.4 per cent (IFPI 2025: 11). Yende, Hlatshwayo and Koliti (Reference Yende, Hlatshwayo and Koliti2025) point out that the digital revolution has transformed how music is created, shared and consumed, allowing artists to reach global audiences through platforms such as Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music. While this shift has raised new legal and financial challenges around copyright and revenue sharing, it has also democratized music distribution by enabling independent artists to bypass traditional industry gatekeepers. They also argue that, in South Africa, these developments have opened up unprecedented opportunities for emerging musicians to publish and promote their work directly and affordably (Yende et al. Reference Yende, Hlatshwayo and Koliti2025: 2).

Several factors have fuelled this growth. First, online access on the continent has recently passed the 50 per cent mark. Although this is still the lowest for any continent, it means that more than 700 million Africans are now connected to the internet (Degenhard Reference Degenhard2024). In South Africa, the connectivity percentage currently stands at 78.9 per cent,Footnote ⁴ and although this translates to a relatively low streaming service adoption rate compared with the global North, it is still an undeniable shift (Van der Merwe and Van Schalkwyk Reference Van der Merwe and Van Schalkwyk2020: 498). De Beukelaar and Eisenberg have also pointed out that, in many parts of Africa, mobile telecom and technology companies play a primary role in the digital distribution of music (Reference De Beukelaar and Eisenberg2020: 196). This can at least partially be linked to the fact that data costs have steadily decreased, making it more affordable for a traditionally poorer population to stream music. Platforms also use music compression technologies to lower the data usage of streaming, thus making it less expensive.Footnote ⁵ Technological advances have also democratized the recording, filming and uploading of African music performances to such an extent that music platform catalogues are growing by thousands of songs per week.Footnote ⁶ The digital divide between rich and poor communities remains high, however, and still affects streaming (Ansell Reference Ansell2022). Lower socio-economic status affects listeners’ ability to afford premium streaming services (which in turn affects streaming income) and their overall ability to stream even on free platforms due to data shortages, lack of access to the internet and lack of access to a streaming device.

From a data perspective, streaming platforms have access to detailed user information, including age, gender and location, but also listening patterns, like when someone streams music, for how long, which songs are skipped, etc. They can also see the ratios between certain genres and premium subscribers who listen to them, which, in the South African case – where there is a significant wealth gap between different population groups – ‘can also be an indication of socio-economic class’.Footnote ⁷ Listener data is processed using machine learning to increase the effectiveness of the platform’s unique algorithm that makes suggestions to listeners based on their musical tastes (Dinnissen and Bauer Reference Dinnissen and Bauer2022: 2). The curation of playlists is another important strategy aimed at growing the number of monthly active users on a platform. To maximize the popularity of playlists, curators use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyse listener data from previous playlists (for example, which songs were repeated or skipped). In this way, different themes or styles are identified that are most likely to boost the popularity (effectiveness) of new playlists. In theory, as this process is repeated, the effectiveness of a platform’s proprietary algorithm, or ‘black box’, increases and the platform becomes more competitive.Footnote ⁸ The act of curation has come under much scrutiny as it is a form of gatekeeping that concentrates power in the hands of an individual human, an algorithm, or a combination of the two (see Prey Reference Prey2018; Bonini and Gandini Reference Bonini and Gandini2019; Maasø and Spilker Reference Maasø and Spilker2022). When considering this against the fact that, historically (and to a great extent still today), the gatekeepers in the Afrikaans music industry were exclusively white (reflecting the wider social hierarchies in apartheid South Africa) and catered for a white audience, what is ‘popular’ from an algorithmic perspective has a high likelihood of repeating this predominance.

The repetition of this process of curation and analysis results in a cyclical system where the very act of streaming (consuming) a song leaves a footprint that contributes to the data that is, in turn, used to curate new music content for a listener to consume. Andy Bennett has pointed out that more recent sociological work on the relationship between the consumption of music and constructions of identity has reframed music as a ‘resource through which individuals negotiate … structural forces and engage in the co-production of their socio-cultural identities’ (Bennett Reference Bennett, Shepherd and Devine2015: 143–4). Applying this logic to the context of a streaming platform, it becomes not just a matter of consuming music as a way to negotiate ‘structural forces’ and ‘social relationships’, but also a scenario where consumption itself affects the trajectory towards new resources that are used in the ‘co-production of socio-cultural identities’. This relationship is also contingent on how ‘personalized media “see” the individual; how this in turn leads them to enact the “data subject”; and what this might imply for the relationship between the data subject and the subject it refers to’ (Prey Reference Prey2018: 1097). This brings us to a fundamental question on the nature of Afrikaans music on streaming platforms: to what extent is platform content (for instance, playlists and suggested songs) influenced by Afrikaans socio-cultural identities, and to what extent are these socio-cultural identities influenced by platform content?

Afrikaans language and identity in context

Afrikaans has its roots in the slave society of the Cape Colony. While Dutch was the original language of officialdom from the middle of the seventeenth century, the vernacular communication between slave owners (mostly from Europe), enslaved people (from various Indian Ocean origins, from Mozambique to Indonesia) and the indigenous Khoi and San people resulted in the emergence of a new language (Alim et al. Reference Alim, Haupt, Jansen and Williams2021: 196). Its development ran parallel to the colonial racialization that constructed social hierarchies that privileged whites, or Europeans, while designating all those who were not of European descent to a subaltern position. Thus the Afrikaans linguistic community, from its inception, was multicultural and, owing to the race consciousness of settler colonists (who saw and projected clear racial distinctions between different speakers), socially divided. The fact that Coloured people have historically represented a significant percentage of Afrikaans speakers was mainly ignored as the language became an important badge of social identity that differentiated the two white populations of South Africa (Van der Waal Reference Van der Waal2012). These two populations were split between those who were descended from the Dutch colonists who settled the Cape in 1652 and whose first language had become Afrikaans by the nineteenth century, and English speakers who came to the colony after Britain occupied it in 1806. At times, tensions between the two groups were high, especially after the South African War (1899–1902), in which the Boers (who were white Afrikaans speakers) were defeated by the British.

The first two decades after the South African War saw a rapid rise in Afrikaans cultural ephemera such as poetry, literary novels, newspapers, advertisements, magazines and gramophone records, which, combined, helped to homogenize AfrikanerFootnote ⁹ identity and to establish Afrikaans as a ‘white man’s language’ (Hofmeyr Reference Hofmeyr, Marks and Trapido1987; Van der Merwe Reference Van der Merwe2017). Afrikaans also became a vital node for political mobilization in that it provided the cornerstone for the development of Afrikaner nationalism (Van Wyk Reference Van Wyk1991: 87; Witz Reference Witz2003: 13). The link between language and politics was further solidified when Afrikaans replaced Dutch as one of the two official languages of the Union of South Africa in 1925. By this time, the standardization of Afrikaans – a project driven by Afrikaner nationalists that allowed for the development of standardized Afrikaans grammar rules and spelling and the establishment of Afrikaans as an academic language – was well under way (Van Wyk Reference Van Wyk1991: 87). Standardized Afrikaans was thus an ethnicized, white version of the language that reflected ideas of ‘purity’, power and political control (especially so during the apartheid era) and that excluded the vernacular (and what Van der Waal (Reference Van der Waal2012) calls ‘non-ethnicized’) Afrikaans, or Kaaps, spoken by Coloured people. As a result, the histories of Afrikaans language practices among white and Coloured people have mainly followed different trajectories. Yet to view them as completely distinct monolithic identities is problematic, as is viewing the silencing of Kaaps as total.

The term ‘Coloured’ in the South African sense does not describe some cultural monolith or racial and ethnic truism. Under the apartheid-era Population Registration Act of 1950, any person who was not white, Black or Indian was assigned to the last available category: Coloured. This negative categorization (if you’re not one of the other groups, you are automatically ‘Coloured’) belied the historical realities of a diverse group of people forging their identities over centuries under an oppressive settler colonial system in the Cape Colony (Martin Reference Martin and Zegeye2001). Several scholars have argued that the cultural practices of Coloured people from the Cape should be viewed as the result of ongoing creolizing forces (Nutall and Michael Reference Nutall and Michael2000; Alim et al. Reference Alim, Haupt, Jansen and Williams2021; Van der Waal Reference Van der Waal2012) that generated – and still generate – ‘histories not only of loss, rupture, transportation, dislocation and discontinuity, but also of cultural creation and contestation in contexts of forced human and cultural heterogeneity and colonial dominance’ (Erasmus Reference Erasmus2011: 639). From a linguistic perspective, some have argued for Afrikaans to be classified as a creole language, while Coloured activist artists who collectively form the Afrikaaps movement – for greater acknowledgement of Kaaps – reject such a linguistic categorization as a ‘product of colonial ideologies at work in these Eurocentric processes of classification’ (Alim et al. Reference Alim, Haupt, Jansen and Williams2021: 196). Coloured culture is not a monolith and ‘Colouredness’ is not total. Rather, Coloured identity reflects the interwoven lived experiences of multiple communities on macro and micro levels, with various dynamic intersections and disjunctions, all set against the historical specifics of colonial and apartheid South Africa. This brings to mind Homi Bhabha’s suggestion that it is ‘in the emergence of the interstices – the overlap and displacement of domains of difference – that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest or cultural value are negotiated’ (Reference Bhabha1994: 2).

It is against this complex linguistic background that the history of recorded Afrikaans music unfolded. From the first gramophone records at the start of the twentieth century to the golden age of CDs in the early 2000s, popular Afrikaans music was almost exclusively recorded by, and for, white Afrikaans speakers (Van der Merwe Reference Van der Merwe2017). It played a central role in their cultural practices and leisure activities and, in some ways, formed part of the politicization of white Afrikaans culture and identity in service of Afrikaner nationalism during the twentieth century. Coloured Afrikaans music artists, on the other hand, despite having a deeply rooted tradition of music performance,Footnote ¹⁰ rarely got to record Afrikaans music. Thus, from a music perspective, Coloured Afrikaans music artists remained as marginalized in the Afrikaans music industry as they were in wider society. As a result, throughout the twentieth century, when new technologies were introduced that influenced music production and consumption, these artists – unlike their white Afrikaans contemporaries – were not in a position to seize the opportunities. To better understand the impact of streaming platforms on these patterns of exclusion, it should be contextualized against the historical introduction of these earlier music technologies.

Historicizing music technology and opportunities

Technological advancements in the recording and distribution of sound, including popular music, started with the invention of gramophone records at the end of the nineteenth century. Hesmondhalgh and Meier have identified a series of key technological advancements in the twentieth-century music industry that resulted in dynamic changes in consumption patterns: phonography, radio, vinyl records, audio cassettes and compact discs ( Reference Hesmondhalgh and Meier2018: 1559). These technologies also had an impact on African societies over time. Barber points out that media technologies on the continent are far from recent or foreign intrusions; successive generations of media have been locally adapted and integrated into cultural life for more than a century (Reference Barber2017: 130). More locally, in South Africa, a number of Afrikaans artists, throughout the twentieth century, capitalized when new technologies were introduced to the local music industry. Some of the first local gramophone records were in Afrikaans (dating to 1910), and a dedicated Afrikaans radio service was established in 1937 by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), which was itself established the year before.Footnote ¹¹ Whether it was on commercial radio (and later television), or on vinyl, cassettes or CDs, white Afrikaans music artists had an almost total monopoly over the Afrikaans music industry (Van der Merwe Reference Van der Merwe2017). This should, of course, be considered against the wider socio-political developments of the period, which saw Afrikaners dominate the political sphere on the one hand, and the state support Afrikaans arts on the other.

The end of apartheid in the early 1990s also marked the end of state support for Afrikaans arts and a shift to the privatization of the Afrikaans culture industry (Steyn Reference Steyn2016). The proliferation of new Afrikaans arts festivals, Afrikaans television channels, Afrikaans pop concerts and the like created new spaces in which commercial Afrikaans pop thrived. As a result, the early 2000s saw an Afrikaans pop music explosion, with numerous artists selling hundreds of thousands of CDs (Van der Merwe Reference Van der Merwe2017). This golden era of CD sales was not to last. First, through music downloads, and more recently through music streaming in what tech analysts call a ‘post-download era’, streaming platforms have had a negative impact on the popularity of CDs, and consequently a negative effect on the income of most artists (Ansell Reference Ansell2022).

The traditional reach of radio, so influential in creating soundscapes in South Africa since the 1920s, has also been steadily decreasing since the early 2000s. In fact, the number of households in South Africa that own a radio was down from 73 per cent in 2001 to 50.3 per cent in 2022.Footnote ¹² To further explain this point, being put on A rotation (the highest level of playlisting – the number of times your song will be played on the radio) on one of the most popular radio stations in South Africa ‘means that your song will be played four times in a week’, as reported by a platform executive who wished to remain anonymous.Footnote ¹³ This may or may not indirectly increase a song’s audience on streaming platforms. Radio stations, however, have responded to the rise of streaming in pragmatic ways – for example through the live streaming of programmes – although it is clear that traditional radio is increasingly being affected by new technology that is not just a form of transmission but a ‘key metaphor for the flow of information in the digital age’ (Morris and Powers Reference Morris and Powers2015: 107). In fact, music streaming platforms differ substantially from older technologies and have the power both to amplify traditional patterns of music consumption and to create new ones.

Historically, the mediation of popular Afrikaans music was managed by white gatekeepers in an industry aimed at white audiences. This had been a constant feature since the first album releases in Afrikaans dating to the first decade of the twentieth century. The social background of this mediation is closely linked to the wider power dynamics within the Afrikaans linguistic community. While Bonini and Gandini (Reference Bonini and Gandini2019: 2) posit that the first decade of the twenty-first century, thanks to the impact of illegal file sharing and the introduction of the internet, constituted a period when traditional mediators were less influential (while they do not explicitly mention it, their study focuses on Europe and the USA), this did not necessarily apply to the Afrikaans context. Here, other factors, like the privatization of the Afrikaans cultural space through Afrikaans arts festivals and privatized television channels, ensured that the (white) Afrikaans music industry boomed. Coloured artists continued to face the same obstacles as in the past: despite a strong music culture, access to proper studios remained limited; artists who did find an audience were limited in terms of infrastructure, which made surviving solely from music almost impossible; they had an audience with limited buying power, which potentially impacted sales of CDs and show tickets; and even in cases where artists did have successes, it was more difficult to establish longevity.Footnote ¹⁴

The Afrikaans mainstream

Mainstream Afrikaans music is not a single genre but a collection of interrelated styles – ranging from country pop and gospel to dance pop and pop rock – grouped together under the broad label of ‘Afrikaans hits’ on platforms such as Spotify. This form of categorization is unusual in the South African context: while most musical taxonomies across the continent are organized by genre (for instance, gospel or Afrobeats), Afrikaans music is typically classified by language. This linguistic framing implies that many listeners search for ‘Afrikaans’ before specifying a genre, reflecting the deep intertwining of language, identity and cultural belonging in Afrikaans-speaking communities. Because the majority of these listeners are white Afrikaans speakers,Footnote ¹⁵ the prominence of language as a marketing and curatorial tool also mirrors the longer history of linguistic hegemony and racialized cultural gatekeeping within Afrikaans music.

However, this hegemony is showing signs of unravelling. Henco Harmse, the head of Afrikaans music at Spotify South Africa, recently commented: ‘[I]n addition to traditional genres [of the CD era and prior] such as pop, praise and worship, and country, there are Afrikaans-speaking women doing really interesting things in genres such as gqom, hip-hop, and dance.’Footnote ¹⁶ This diversity of styles that collectively fall under the banner of ‘Afrikaans’ creates the impression, on the surface, that the digital sphere is a space where musical diversity thrives and where new music economies are formed. Studies have shown, however, that more content does not necessarily mean more variety in listening patterns. Beer (Reference Beer2017: 7) states that algorithms are likely to place a limitation on cultural experiences and wider, external social connections and influences, resulting in users being confined to the same cultural experiences. Maasø and Spilker call this the ‘streaming paradox’, ‘the way in which plenitude at the outset produces narrowness as the outcome’ (Reference Maasø and Spilker2022: 300). This happens because the algorithmic processes involved in curating and suggesting new music content (from thousands of songs) in fact lead to directing listeners towards already popular artists and genres. In the case of Afrikaans music, such processes have the potential to inadvertently continue trends linked to the complex history of the language itself.

An analysis of four songs on Spotify’s biggest Afrikaans hits of 2023 playlist points to some of the most popular themes in mainstream Afrikaans music. The music videos on YouTube were also analysed. The most popular Afrikaans artist is Riaan Benadé, and his song ‘Vat ’n bietjie’ (‘Drink a little’) has been streamed 7,381,573 timesFootnote ¹⁷ on Spotify. The music video has been viewed 11 million times on YouTube.Footnote ¹⁸ Stylistically, it is a rhythmic acoustic guitar-driven sing-along song. The video shows a group of white men dressed in khaki clothes playfully abducting their friend to take him to his bachelor’s party. Scenes show them drinking and having a good time, going on safari and braaing. Footnote ¹⁹

Another example is the song ‘Tekkies brand’ (‘Burning sneakers’) by female artist Irene-Louise van Wyk.Footnote ²⁰ This is a dance pop song about sokkie – a popular dance style among Afrikaners.Footnote ²¹ The video shows a group of young white people sokkie dancing in a venue in Pretoria. Another very popular artist is Brendan Peyper. His dance pop hit ‘Toer om die vloer’ (‘Tour the dance floor’) has had 4,548,588 streams on Spotify and 5.9 million views on YouTube.Footnote ²² The video and the lyrics contain a number of popular themes: a reference to the term boeremeisie (‘farmer girl’), khaki clothes, a farm setting, and they also dance sokkie. A rising star on the most popular list is Dodo Nyoka, who is originally from the Congo but grew up in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. While his mother tongues are Xhosa and French, he is also fluent in Afrikaans.Footnote ²³ The video of his hit song ‘Foto’s’ (‘Photos’)Footnote ²⁴ shows him riding a horse on a farm, then cuts to a scene where he, as the only Black person, is partying with a group of other young, exclusively white people. The lyrics make references to the famous white artist Appel (Apple), getting ‘a little drunk’, ‘lighting the fires’ for a braai, and ‘hooking up’ with a girl. Dodo Nyoka is a Black artist, but he sings and speaks with an Afrikaans accent (including a pronounced ‘r’) that is indistinguishable from a white speaker’s. The fact that he is the only Black person in the music video and that he uses themes (the farm, partying, braaing) that are strongly linked to contemporary white Afrikaans identity creates the impression that he is not only performing for a white audience but is also performing aspects of whiteness.

Judging from the above, the most recurring themes (implied either lyrically and/or visually) on the Afrikaans hits list are dancing (sokkie), partying/drinking, the outdoors (mostly the farm), heteronormative romance, khaki clothes and braaing. These themes represent a continuation of a music tradition of upbeat major chord structures and lyrics that emphasize leisure activities (fun, uncritical and light-hearted as opposed to socially critical and introspective) that white Afrikaans speakers have long had a taste for, and which has ensured a type of predictability that artists have capitalized on. Although commenting on a different music landscape, Arvidsson and Bonini (Reference Arvidsson and Bonini2015: 159) have argued exactly this: that audiences become commodities when they can be relied upon to ‘reproduce a particular consumption norm with calculable predictability’. Traditionally, these types of songs were called lekkerliedjies (‘nice songs’) (Van der Merwe Reference Van der Merwe2014). This is not necessarily unique in the world of music, but lekkerliedjies have at times been criticized for being ‘trite and banal’ (Jury Reference Jury1996: 99), especially during times of increased political tension during the late apartheid years. In the post-apartheid era, the leisurely nature of these popular visual and lyrical themes obscures deeper elements of Afrikaner identity constructions. Three decades after apartheid, Afrikaners find themselves in a liminal space where they lack political power (in stark contrast to the apartheid era) yet hold on to material wealth, but they also acutely feel that their language and way of life are under threat in a multicultural democracy (Van der Merwe Reference Van der Merwe2017; Sonnekus Reference Sonnekus, Frechsi, Schmahmann and Van Robbroeck2020; Steyn Reference Steyn2012; Korf and Malan Reference Korf and Malan2002; Grundlingh Reference Grundlingh2004; Vestergaard Reference Vestergaard2001). Faced with the ‘immeasurable debt’ (Sonnekus Reference Sonnekus, Frechsi, Schmahmann and Van Robbroeck2020: 94) incurred by their forefathers’ complicity with apartheid, many Afrikaners tend to reconstruct new relationships with this troubled past (by ignoring problematic areas and focusing only on ‘the pretty things’),Footnote ²⁵ in what Melissa Steyn has called the ‘ignorance contract’ (Reference Steyn2012: 8), to make it easier for them to live untroubled lives in the present.

Given the dynamics of streaming popularity, it is conceivable that the consumption of mainstream Afrikaans music plays a part in the construction and continuation of a particular brand of whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa that stands in stark contrast to the rest of the Afrikaans linguistic communities. While the mainstream caters for and is dominated by white Afrikaans speakers, listener data also points to the rising popularity of other Afrikaans music genres on streaming platforms that are far removed from the mainstream and in which different aspects of Coloured culture are performed. By opening up new spaces where Coloured artists can find an audience, streaming platforms act as catalysts for the consumption of Afrikaans music by and for the Coloured community that breaks with this history of exclusion. The following sections explore two genres that have come to represent such a break: Afrikaans gqom and Koortjies.

Afrikaans gqom

Over the past four years, Afrikaans gqom has surged across streaming platforms, signalling not only the growing visibility of Coloured artists but also a renewed presence of Kaaps – the vernacular form of Afrikaans spoken predominantly in Cape Town. Although its linguistic and stylistic roots lie far from the Cape, the genre’s transplantation from Durban to the Western Cape marks a striking instance of musical and cultural translation. ‘Gqom’ derives from Zulu, the dominant language in Durban townships and their surroundings where the genre originated. It is an onomatopoeic expression with a deep click sound that mimics the sound of a beat on a drum. Zungu (Reference Zungu2020) places the origins of gqom in the evolution from localized performance traditions and recontextualized communal rhythmic patterns into an urban, electronically mediated sound that bridges heritage and innovation. Gqom emerged in this setting around 2008 (Lobley Reference Lobley, Reily and Brucher2018: 63) and is a genre of electronic music with synthesizers and samples over a distinctive repetitive beat.Footnote ²⁶ It is often described as ‘raw’ and ‘dark’ and marks a departure from kwaito, the popular South African electronic dance music genre that emerged at the end of the apartheid era (Eaby-Lomas Reference Eaby-Lomas2021: 101). Eaby-Lomas (ibid.: 101) further suggests that gqom can be understood as a post-kwaito phenomenon: it inherits kwaito’s rhythmic pulse and youth culture ethos but departs from its optimism to reflect the disillusionment of a generation confronting persistent inequality in post-apartheid South Africa.Footnote ²⁷ Furthermore, the introduction of the internet and new digital forms of distribution have helped gqom ‘gain autonomy from its predecessor’ (ibid.: 102).

Gqom’s transplantation to the Cape Flats and its translation into Afrikaans (more specifically, Kaaps)Footnote ²⁸ more than a decade after it initially emerged add to its post-kwaito autonomy. Whether consciously or not, the marriage of gqom beats and Kaaps delivers a powerful result. An initial comparison will find superficial similarities between the violent surroundings of the original gqom artists in Durban and the environment on the Cape Flats. As a space, the Cape Flats, on the outskirts of Cape Town, marks the intersection of colonial and apartheid-era racial segregation, forced removals and oppression, as well as acute gang violence and widespread drug use. However, while Durban gqom can be associated with a sense of disillusionment, as Eaby-Lomas suggests, Afrikaans gqom lyrics and accompanying videos generally follow a different, more playful theme. This indicates that it is the sound of gqom, rather than its lyrical content, that most strongly appeals to Afrikaans performers.

Among the earliest and most influential Afrikaans gqom artists is Tashreeq de Villiers, known as Ricky Vani Frontline, whose 2021 release ‘Ricky Opi Beat’ became a viral success, garnering over 2 million views on YouTube.Footnote ²⁹ De Villiers was drawn to gqom, he explains, when he recognized that its characteristic tempo of around 128 beats per minute (bpm) closely matched that of Klopse marching bands that parade through Cape Town’s streets during the annual Tweede Nuwejaar Footnote ³⁰ (Second New Year) celebrations.Footnote ³¹ This rhythmic parallel reveals an unexpected continuity between gqom’s percussive drive and the ghoema tradition – a rhythm historically rooted in the musical practices of enslaved people at the Cape and today an emblem of Coloured identity (Martin Reference Martin2013). Indeed, Eaby-Lomas has identified 128 bpm as the standard tempo used in Durban gqom (Reference Eaby-Lomas2021: 110), exactly the same tempo as ‘Ricky Opi Beat’. It is, however, not only the tempo that is familiar but also the beat, which is similar to the traditional ghoema rhythm of Coloured Afrikaans music from Cape Town. The ghoema drum was originally played by enslaved people and the beat is a distinctive Capetonian cultural feature (Martin Reference Martin2013: 113). Even linguistically, de Villiers adapts gqom’s pronunciation: replacing the isiZulu click with a guttural gh, transforming gqom into ghom – a phonetic echo of ghoema itself.

De Villiers has been singing in Klopse groups since a young age and is well embedded in the music scene of Cape Town (his cousin is Youngsta CPT – perhaps the most successful rapper of the new generation of hip-hop artists of the Cape Flats, and his uncle is Zayn Adams, also a well-known singer). According to de Villiers, it seemed a natural thing to add Afrikaans (or specifically Kaaps) lyrics, instead of the normal Zulu, to an already familiar beat and tempo. This might explain why gqom resonates so strongly among a Coloured Afrikaans audience. In terms of production, de Villiers records in a professional studio and most of his live shows are confined to the Western Cape province.Footnote ³² His choice to combine gqom beats with Kaaps lyrics underscores a broader trend of reterritorializing a genre born in Durban into a distinctly Capetonian expression.

Another act at the forefront of Afrikaans gqom is the Temple Boys CPT, a group of young artists from Ravensmead on the Cape Flats that rose to prominence with their unique blend of gqom beats and Kaapse lyrics. The Temple Boys follow a ‘do it yourself’ (DIY) ethos. In contrast to Ricky Vani Frontline, they record only on a computer and a microphone, without expensive studio or recording equipment, which reflects both the accessibility of digital production tools and the democratizing reach of streaming platforms. Central to their message (and DIY ethos) is that you don’t need much to ‘follow your dream’.Footnote ³³ They have garnered a significant following on TikTok, with more than 200,000 followers, and their hit ‘Saggies’ (‘Softly’)Footnote ³⁴ has had 3 million YouTube views in two years. Perhaps not coincidentally, the tempo is also exactly 128 bpm.

There are a number of other Coloured artists who also produce Afrikaans gqom. A survey of Spotify and YouTube shows that the genre is gaining popularity. The song ‘Wikkel Wikkel’ (‘Shake shake’) by RJay & LK featuring AG-B and Early-B has been viewed 2.3 million times on YouTube.Footnote ³⁵ Another notable song is ‘Coloured Goose’ (‘Coloured girl’) by Atie-G featuring Paula Kammies. Kammies stands out as she is one of very few female Afrikaans gqom artists. One of Ricky Vani Frontline’s other hits is ‘Anni brand’ (‘On fire’), featuring Weh Sliiso, with 1.7 million YouTube views.Footnote ³⁶ Only two of these songs, ‘Coloured Goose’ and ‘Wikkel Wikkel’, have accompanying videos, while the others are music only. Both videos show people dancing in the bhenga style, the dance associated with gqom (Oliver Reference Oliver2016). References are made to the Western Cape and Cape Town, overtly situating the music within a specific cultural space. In both videos, people are partying at someone’s house (urban setting), with fancy cars in the background. Together with Ricky Vani Frontline and Temple Boys CPT, these artists illustrate how Afrikaans gqom bridges linguistic, cultural and technological spaces. It thus stands as both a local adaptation and a broader metaphor for how digital and cultural flows continually reshape the meanings of music in post-apartheid South Africa.

In stark thematic contrast to Afrikaans gqom, which is closely linked to leisure activities and partying, another Afrikaans music genre – the type of Pentecostal church music known as Koortjies – has also experienced a rapid increase in its online audience in recent years. Despite their differences, the growing popularity of both Afrikaans gqom and Koortjies on streaming platforms shows how these platforms can help generate new alternative publics, vernacular aesthetics and new circuits of value that break with the historical marginalization of Coloured Afrikaans music.

Koortjies

Koortjies is an Afrikaans gospel genre directly linked to the Pinkster (the Coloured Pentecostal) church. Wider Pentecostalism in South Africa dates back to the launch of the Apostolic Faith Mission in 1908, and over time African gospel musicians in the church have fused American gospel music with a variety of local genres, including kwela and mbaqanga (Martin Reference Martin2013: 303). Koortjies musicians in turn have added their own unique elements, such as ghoema and other local Capetonian rhythms and melodic traditions (ibid.Reference Martin: 303–4). It also has a strong link to indigenous Khoi and San cultural practices in which people danced in a circle to repetitive music to induce a state of trance or heightened spiritual awareness.Footnote ³⁷ As a result, Koortjies has come to represent a clear sonic identifier of the Coloured community (Engelbrecht Reference Engelbrecht2023).Footnote ³⁸

Pentecostalism experienced a new wave of popularity from the 1990s onwards across South Africa with the increased globalization of Christian media (Thompson Reference Thompson2015: 14; see also Meyer Reference Meyer2004; Comaroff and Comaroff Reference Comaroff, Comaroff, Shepherd and Robins2008), which also affected the popularity of Koortjies. It is, however, in the last five years especially that the online streaming of Koortjies (mostly on YouTube) has soared, mostly due to the popularity of a television show with the same name.Footnote ³⁹ Koortjies (the show) is broadcast on the KykNet channel, which forms part of the DSTV paid subscription television service. There are many music videos from Koortjies on YouTube that have between 1.5 and 2.7 million views, suggesting that the show, and by extension the genre, has a large audience. Given that the television show is behind a paywall, it is likely that many people of lower socio-economic status watch Koortjies only on YouTube.Footnote ⁴⁰

Other popular Koortjies artists include Neville D, whose video of a ‘music battle’ with Jonathan Rubain (in which they try to out-perform each other with a Koortjie performance) has had 2.4 million views on YouTube.Footnote ⁴¹ Another star is Kunjalo, a female artist whose song ‘Hy maak ’n weg’ (‘He makes a way’) has had an impressive 5.7 million streams on YouTube, despite showing just an album cover, not a video.Footnote ⁴² Singer Alton Zakay’s song ‘Sterk Toring’ (‘Strong tower’) has had 2.6 million views on YouTube.Footnote ⁴³ While there are many other Koortjie artists and groups, these represent at least some of the most popular ones in the digital space. These artists have Spotify profiles but relatively small audiences on that platform (Neville D has 19,166, Kunjalo 17,398, Alton Zakay 14,893, and Jonathan Rubain 16,280), which suggests that Koortjies is more established on YouTube at the moment. Music videos invariably have either a TV studio setting (for the programme Koortjies) or a church setting, with high-energy performances and enthusiastic congregations. From a production perspective, the music is recorded professionally and mixed in first-class studios. The in-house Koortjies band consists of eight musicians (excluding the main vocalist), playing various instruments. Notably, the music is mixed specifically for smaller speakers common in television sets or small sound systems as those are the main channels through which the music will be heard.Footnote ⁴⁴ This reminds us of Louise Meintjies’ observations on the way in which Zulu musicians’ recordings in the 1980s and 1990s were mixed specifically for the cheap sound systems that would be listened to in the townships (Meintjies Reference Meintjies2003).

In terms of language, Koortjies lyrics tend to be in standard Afrikaans and not Kaaps, possibly due to their liturgical status. However, the call-and-response dialogues between pastor and congregation – which do not form part of the main lyrics of the songs – are often in Kaaps.Footnote ⁴⁵ This view of standard Afrikaans as the proper medium when performing church music in this context reveals a complex fault line in the language politics surrounding Afrikaans, intricately interwoven with colonial-era constructions of race, language and social power. As mentioned earlier, the standardization of Afrikaans was closely linked to the ideology of white Afrikaner nationalism that claimed ownership over the language and, in the process, silenced more vernacular versions such as Kaaps. In recent years, several Afrikaans hip-hop artists from the Cape Flats have been instrumental in advocating for the recognition of Kaaps and, as prominent performers in Kaaps, they have also assisted with the writing of the first dictionary of Kaaps (Haupt Reference Haupt2021). Although their work is very important socially, most of these Kaapse hip-hop artists have relatively small digital profiles. Furthermore, geographically, Koortjies has a larger footprint than just Cape Town, and, in linguistic terms, it is also more diverse than the Afrikaans/Kaaps dichotomy.

According to Daniel Titus, the musical director of the television show, Koortjies has a national (and even cross-border) popularity. They have toured South Africa and Namibia and have played sold-out shows in churches, town halls, theatres and stadiums, in rural areas and cities. Everywhere they encounter local Koortjies singers (and sometimes singers from other regions appear on the show) who sing in vernacular forms of Afrikaans other than Kaaps, with different accents and subtly different playing styles.Footnote ⁴⁶ This broadens the linguistic – and artistic – scope of Koortjies beyond Kaaps to include other vernacular forms of Afrikaans from more rural areas of South Africa, many of which have been historically even more marginalized. The fact that Koortjies singers from these Coloured communities can now be easily accessed on streaming platforms marks a significant step in the increased visibility and consumption of their cultural practices.

Artists’ responses to music streaming

Technological shifts in how music is consumed do not affect listeners alone; artists, too, must continually adapt to navigate and succeed within newly emerging digital environments. All of the artists interviewed here have their music digitally distributed across all major music streaming platforms by aggregators such as DistroKid. Artists can then access their listener data either through their aggregator, or directly on their individual platform accounts.Footnote ⁴⁷ The data gives artists unprecedented insight into the consumption of their music, including the locations from where their music is streamed,Footnote ⁴⁸ exactly how many streams each song has on each platform, and in some cases even how long certain songs are played before they are skipped. Artists use this data in different ways. For instance, the popular Afrikaans rock band Spoegwolf uses streaming data to mitigate risk when organizing international tours. As a result, they regularly book successful tours to the UK, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, where they know there are large concentrations of people streaming their music.Footnote ⁴⁹ Others, like the Temple Boys, look at listener data to see what works compositionally and to ‘push harder for success and to make better music for our listeners’.Footnote ⁵⁰ Pierre Greeff, vocalist of the popular Afrikaans electro pop band Die Heuwels Fantasties and founder of the independent record company Supra Familias, also emphasizes the importance of finding the optimal ‘sweet spot’ in song length, particularly concerning the timing of the first chorus, as well as determining the ideal number of songs for each album.Footnote ⁵¹ Ricky Vani Frontline does not use the data for touring or compositional choices, but does focus on audience engagement to boost his traction on platforms. He singles out TikTok as the platform with the algorithm that responds the quickest to content posts, which is then enhanced if the artist actively responds to fans’ reactions by re-posting.Footnote ⁵² The Temple Boys prefer to use Facebook as their main channel to communicate with their 175,000 followers on the platform. On the other hand, Koortjies is less affected by platform data. The musicians from the television show, for instance, do not own the rights to the music (the television channel does) and do not upload music onto platforms themselves.Footnote ⁵³

While the continued popularity of mainstream Afrikaans pop is unsurprising – given its longstanding dominance in the local music economy – the rise of alternative genres owes much to the democratization of access between artist and audience through free streaming services. However, this shift has not necessarily translated into economic success. Streaming still constitutes a relatively small portion of most artists’ income, particularly in South Africa, where even top-streamed Afrikaans artists often derive only a third of their earnings from streaming (Ansell Reference Ansell2022).Footnote ⁵⁴ Due to the relatively small size of the Afrikaans-speaking population, streaming is unlikely to surpass live performances as the primary income source in the near future.

Has the scene changed?

Although listeners now have access to millions of songs – often for free – research shows that algorithmic recommendations tend to steer audiences towards what is already popular. This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as the ‘streaming paradox’, also affects the streaming of Afrikaans music. Data from Spotify, YouTube and TikTok indicates that music reflecting longstanding lyrical and visual themes associated with whiteness continues to dominate. These themes are closely tied to white Afrikaner leisure and worldviews, which, while seemingly innocuous, reflect complex socio-cultural identity formations rooted in South Africa’s colonial and apartheid history. As a result, streaming platforms – despite their promise of openness – do not represent a complete break from the historical marginalization of the broader Afrikaans-speaking community and its artists.

However, this exclusion is not absolute. The growing popularity of Afrikaans gqom and Koortjies illustrates emerging cultural shifts. The rise of Afrikaans gqom can be attributed to several factors: its pre-existing audience on the Cape Flats, its rhythmic similarity to the local ghoema beat (despite no direct historical link), and the affordability and accessibility of digital distribution. While Koortjies gained visibility through the television programme of the same name, its sustained success lies in its free and unlimited availability on YouTube.Footnote ⁵⁵ Its appeal must also be understood in relation to the genre’s deep cultural roots in the Coloured community and the broader growth of Pentecostalism in South Africa. Together, these two genres reflect complex intersectional identities within the Afrikaans linguistic community. Although they may not influence algorithmic curation in the same way as mainstream Afrikaans pop, they are part of new cultural networks shaping the identities of Coloured South Africans.

Ultimately, the interplay between content and socio-cultural identity in streaming environments is both reciprocal and problematic. Streaming platforms often reinforce existing structures of exclusion because the content that circulates most widely is embedded within those very structures. At the same time, they enable alternative narratives – allowing Afrikaans gqom to emerge from a bedroom studio in Ravensmead or Koortjies from a Pentecostal church to reach broader audiences and gain cultural relevance in ways previously unimaginable. This shows that platforms can also be paradoxical. Although the scope of this study is highly localized, it demonstrates that streaming platforms are reshaping how music is accessed and consumed – even in areas with lower internet penetration than the global North. It also reveals how artists are adapting to this changing landscape by engaging with the granular data provided by these platforms. While human and algorithmic gatekeeping can reinforce historical patterns of exclusion, these same platforms also offer pathways for decentralization and cultural visibility, enabling historically marginalized music genres to find new prominence online.