Sgubhu Se Monati

I've had a lot of people give me that weird look for telling them that Amapiano is a spiritual genre. Although it's all fun and jokes in the moment, I couldn't be more serious about my statement and this is why.

The African Drum (Djembe) was invented in the 12th Century by the Mandike tribe which comes from Mali. The word "Dje'' means to gather and the word "be'' means everyone and from the annotation we understand how the drum was used to unify people. In African communities, the drum is seen as the heartbeat, it evokes passion and excitement and some experience a trance and connect with the spiritual realm. The African Drum can be found in other cultural spheres such as being used for beat making when kusinwa in celebrations and by Izangoma("diviners'') as the drum is a trance-inducing instrument. Linguistically, the word isangoma and mungoma( "diviner" in Venda or Tsonga) refers to the drum.

Coming back to modern day context, the African Drum is still found in cultural spheres and is now being used in modern ways. The greatest example of this is through music. The African Drum is found in many African genres such as Afro beats, Gqom, Kwaito, Maskandi and Amapiano just to name a few. These genres obviously don't sound the same and the drums in them also don't sound the same. This is achieved by using technology to change the drum sound in various ways to achieve that authentic drum sound for that specific genre.

Many people know the song Ilog Drum by Kabza De Small but a lot of people don't know what Ilog Drum is. The log drum is a drum that's made by carving a hollow in a log or bamboo and in African communities, it was used to signify emergencies, in celebrations and to welcome outsiders. The log drum sound in Amapiano is that gong sound that we all go crazy over and in my opinion, what makes an Amapiano song.

I hope I've argued my point well enough and I think I've won this debate for my fellow Yano brothers and sisters.