Such acclaim is striking for a track that was originally released in South Africa in 2006. The success of Township Funk speaks to the richness of South Africa’s music scene, and to the growing influence of modern African sounds in Western electronic dance music. Mary Anne Hobbs, the influential host of BBC Radio 1s experimental show, said Mujavas success is an enormous crossover moment.
Mujava, 24, who is also known as Elvis Maswanganyi, began making music as a teenager in Atteridgeville, a township near Pretoria. He earned a following for his productions of hip- hop, house music and kwaito, a dance style marked by rolling, slowed- down house beats and call-and-response vocals. Since the early 1990s, kwaito akin to American rap has become the primary sound of the countrys townships. “All the taxi drivers loved my music because of the bass",said Mujava, in a phone interview from his mothers house in Atteridgeville.
Township Funk, which was released in 2006 on the album Sgubhu Sa Pitori (The Sounds of Pretoria) by the South African record label Sheer Music, expanded Mujavas horizon. “It was a song I wanted to make thats different to all the music I made before," he said. “Take this trance music, this techno garage and add more drums, like a drum majorette." The response was huge, he said, with D.J.s playing the song on local radio, at township parties and in cosmopolitan house-music clubs.
