Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music From South Africa

Some of electronic music's key developments during the 2010s came from outside its established hubs. Often, these were the result of traditional genres and instruments being electronically re-spun using digital software. (Uganda's electro acholi and Tanzanian singeli are two good examples.) In 2010, London's Honest Jon's unleashed a collection of Shangaan electro, a fast-paced style of electronic music from South Africa, that set the tempo for a decade of increasingly globalised club music.
Honest Jon's co-owner Mark Ainley was tipped off by the documentary filmmaker Wills Glasspiegel, who knew the key Shangaan producer, Richard Mthetwa (AKA Nozinja). Together with Basic Channel's Mark Ernestus, Ainley put together a compilation of Nozinja's productions. Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music From South Africa sounded unlike anything else to hit record shelves in 2010. There was frenzied interest whenever the white labels were played at Ernestus' Hard Wax shop in Berlin, while Ainley stuck the record straight in the racks at Honest Jon's, with no introduction, publicity or marketing. "No one had a clue about it, including the people working there," he said. "You had to put the record on to find out."
The compilation was followed by an extensive series of 12-inches, gathered together after two years as the album Shangaan Shake, an intercontinental remix package featuring the footwork duo DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn, UK innovators Actress and Peverelist, US heads Theo Parrish and Anthony "Shake" Shakir, and creative outliers like Ricardo Villalobos and Oni Ayhun, bringing Nozinja's music into even more homes and clubs.