It’s been 40 years since the first ever house track, and its legacy lives ‘On and On’

No origin story is clear-cut, but perhaps none more than Afro house. The story of Afro house is long and winding, with multiple different innovators working, often at the same time, across the globe. It is a story that is still going today, with the genre morphing further into new directions.

But first, what does Afro house sound like?

“Afro house, as a subgenre, presents a spiritual and polyrhythmic sound where ancestral grooves meet electronic music,” says South London producer Hagan, a staple of the UK’s Afro house scene. “Primarily originating in South Africa, the genre transcends borders and can be further broken down based on various factors: location, African music traditions, tempo, instruments used, bassline patterns, and the intricate placement of drums and melodies. Some variants produce high-tension building drops, while others are very soulful. What keeps them all connected is the distinct polyrhythms created by the African percussion and timbres heard in the arrangements.”

As Hagan mentioned, Afro house’s roots can be traced back to South Africa in the late ’80s, early ’90s, when local DJs in Johannesburg and Pretoria were beginning to get a taste for the new house sounds coming from Chicago. While American anti-apartheid sanctions made it difficult for music-lovers to import records, they found ways of getting their hands on new tracks, asking friends at airlines to sneak them into their luggage or paying couriers to smuggle them in.

Vinny Da Vinci and DJ Christos were amongst those making a name for themselves in the (segregated) South African club scene. “I grew up listening to all types of music. Once I caught the house bug I never looked back.” Da Vinci told IOL (a South African news platform) in 2014.

In 1994, the African National Congress led by Nelson Mandela, was elected to government, bringing with it an end to apartheid. With sanctions lifted, house music flowed into South Africa, becoming the soundtrack to an era of immense social and political change.

Around this time, DJs had begun to stamp their own style on the genre, slowing tracks down to around 110 BPM and adding their own lyrics. This new style coming out of the townships was called kwaito. While some argue kwaito was around before 1994, DJ Oskido, a pioneering figure of the sound, believes its creation to be a direct response to the end of apartheid. Speaking to The Guardian in 2011, he said: “That’s when the idea of kwaito came through for me. And after we slowed down the beats we started thinking: Why can’t we put our own lyrics on it? Why can’t we write? We are free now!”

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By the late ’90s, house and kwaito were mainstream genres in South Africa, equivalent to pop music in the West. With much thanks to the radio station YFM, the sounds of electronic dance music could be heard blasting out of taxis, in supermarkets, and at barbers, as well as at clubs and parties, at all times of the day.

Meanwhile, in the US, DJs and producers had started introducing complex African polyrhythms into their house productions, played either live or electronically via bongos, congas, claves and djembes. Two New York-based imprints were particularly instrumental to this. One was Jerome Sydenham’s Ibadan Records (established 1995) and the other was Joe Clausell’s Spiritual Life Music (1996). Between them, they released tracks that would play a huge part in the birth of Afro-influenced house music including Jephté Guillaume’s ‘Lakou-A’, Afrikan Jazz’s ‘Stubborn Problems’, Clausell’s ‘Je Ka Jo’ as well as his remix of Ten City’s ‘All Loved Out’, Claussell and Kerri Chandler’s ‘Escravos De Jo’, and Chandler’s ‘Lagos Jump’.

With this cultural exchange of music continuing to take place, South African house producers began to combine the sounds of kwaito with deep house and more traditional African elements around the turn of the century. “Afro house has its foundation in house music,” says South African producer TekniQ. “A genre that has been exposed to us South Africans from as early as 1994 onwards. So, when it was time for us to conceive our own interpretation of it, we did it in a way we could understand and enjoy by mixing it with African influences. I think we found a haven or an escape in music as South Africans, and Afro house is a bi-product of the circumstance.”

South African producer Black Coffee might be the ideal personification of Afro house’s journey since the mid 2000s. Establishing his Soulistic label in 2005, with its debut release ‘Stimela’ placing him firmly in the Afro house canon, the artist rose from being a relatively unknown DJ to becoming the first ever resident at Hï Ibiza in 2017 and then the first African musician to win a GRAMMY Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album in 2022. Shout out Bucie too, who collaborated with Black Coffee on some of his biggest tracks, and produced her own Afro house bangers like ‘Easy to Love’.

“Black Coffee has played a significant role in the growth of Afro House,” explains TekniQ. “He is one of the biggest exports of Afro House music and has helped paved way for young aspiring artists and DJs in the African continent.” These include, but are not limited to, Uncle Waffles, Da Capo, DJ Kent, Thazkin, Culoe de Song, Shimza, Caiiro, and DESIREE.

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Afro house is now one of the most popular subgenres on this list, with scenes established all over the globe, particularly in cities where there is a large African diaspora such as Lisbon, London, Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris. “As soon as it cemented its place on the global stage, Afro house catapulted to being one of the most sought after genres of today’s dance music scene. It has launched the most diverse talent within its sphere, each artist telling their own story through this music,” says TekniQ.

“I love seeing the growth of the scene from where it started to where it is today,” says Kitty Amor, a DJ who has been championing the sound in the UK since her university days. “There were hardly any venues or external promoters that were interested in what we were doing from 2009 to 2020. Now the sound has become global, there has been an increase in interest from popular club venues who are booking international Afro house DJs alongside those already established in the UK – it’s wonderful to see the community spill outwards and have more of a culturally diverse audience.”

“But it is important for producers and DJs to appreciate and value the history of the sound and to keep its authenticity alive,” notes Amor. “Reflecting what we do in the UK back to the beauty of Africa is something I’ve always vowed to do over the last 15 years and something I will continue to do.”

Speaking on the sound’s evolution in the UK, Karen Nyame KG says: “The proliferation of Afro-electronic genres in general has opened up new avenues for British producers to explore and experiment more. Those of us, myself included, who were entrenched in the UK funky scene of the 2000s are offering a reinterpretation of familiar sounds through an Afro-electronic lens.” Other key Afro house producers and DJs in the UK include Sef Kombo, Zepherin Saint, Supa D, Scratcha DVA, Tribal Brothers,DJ IC and Charisse C.