Music Break: Gugulethu’s rooftops

You’ll rarely see local rap artists, especially ones from Cape Town, on South African music video channels. But not if Driemanskap had anything to do with it.

Carsteanca via Flickr.

Ever since they started putting out records in 2007, Cape Town based label Pioneer Unit has been catching the local music scene off guard. Remember them introducing Rattex, KONFAB, Ben Sharpa and Jaak to the world. But you’ll rarely see these artists on South African music channels.

Whatever the reason for the industry’s reluctance in the past, it will be difficult for them to ignore the new song and music video for Driemanskap‘s ‘S’phum’eGugs.”

As the track title has it: they’re from Gugs, or Gugulethu, one of Cape Town’s townships (if you’ve been to Cape Town, you’ll recognize most of the landmarks) and they’re killing it. Add to that the  only female in the group, Kanyi, sure got some skills, even when finding herself balancing on one of Gugulethu’s rooftops as we can see in the raw footage for the music video:

Further Reading

And do not hinder them

We hardly think of children as agents of change. At the height of 1980s apartheid repression in South Africa, a group of activists did and gave them the tool of print.

The new antisemitism?

Stripped of its veneer of nuance, Noah Feldman’s essay in ‘Time’ is another attempt to silence opponents of the Israeli state by smearing them as anti-Jewish racists.