some South African music!

If you want to make friends in South Africa, you just need to do one simple thing: dance. Even if you are bad at dancing, people will happily laugh at you, mimic your "moves" and then teach you how to "dance like a South African." Now I hate dancing. A lot. I like to watch other people dance. But if you try to pull me onto the dance floor, then you're going to end up with your arm chopped off. Or worse.

Most of our coaches and friends would have completely cast me out if it were not for my one redeeming quality; I love South Africa music! Today I'm going to share with you some of my favorite South African tunes:

Bojo Mujo - Thando Iwam (Marry Me)
This is House music. Similar to European House music in that it has a strong beat and is great to dance to (not that I dance - I've been told it's great to dance to...), but it has it's own distinct, African feel. The last minute of the video is great because you can see how South Africans dance!

Liquideep - Still
Another House song. This song was one of the most popular songs in South Africa for a few months when I first arrived.

Zahara - Loliwe
The number one South African artist. Her album Loliwe went platinum just 13 days after it was released, this song was at the top of South African music charts for over three months and she recently won 8 awards at the South African Music Festival in May. This is a song that I often use during Skillz Street graduation videos and it is so awesome to hear the whole room start singing along when it comes on (and often times the girls end up singing so loud that you can't even hear the music anymore).

AKA - Victory Lap
A taste of some South African Urban Street music. AKA is becoming one of my favorite artists.

DJ Cleo - Facebook
And we're back to House music with a song about Facebook - how awesome is that? Facebook, Myxit (another social networking site) and LinkedIn are huge in South Africa. Parts of Africa even have more advanced 3G/4G mobile technologies than the developed world because although people don't have access to computers, they all have cell phones. DJ Cleo has other songs I like better, but this one just really entertains me.

Freshly Ground - Nomvula (After the Rain)
Freshly Ground is the band that produced the Official Anthem of the South African World Cup, 'Waka Waka,' with Shakira. I've had the pleasure of seeing them live and they are fantastic performers.

South Africans also love American music - Adele, Akon, 2pac and 50 Cent (if one more person asks me if I'm "west side" or "east side" I'm going to shoot them), Carley Rae Jepsen and the Biebs are just some of their favorite artists - but I figured you probably hear enough of that crap those songs on U.S. radio, so I chose to do you a favor and not to include them in this blog post (you can thank me later).

I hope you enjoyed that little taste of South Africa! And I hope you'll play some of these songs in the background every now and then so that I'll have someone to sing along with when I return home!


Note: Music videos are not mine. They were all found on YouTube and the songs and videos are property of the artists.