kwaito

English

Etymology

From Camtho, from Afrikaans kwaai (“cool”, literally “angry”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkwaɪtoʊ/

Noun

kwaito (uncountable)

1. (South Africa, music) A style of music featuring words chanted over house music, originating in Johannesburg during the 1990s.
   • 2005, Martin Scherzinger, “The Globalisation of South African Art Music”, in Christine Lucia, editor, The World of South African Music‎^[1], Cambridge Scholars Press, →ISBN:

     Kwaito is a genre-defying style blending the programmed percussion and vibrant call-and-response vocals of 1980s bubble-gum with British garage, American hip-hop and the new Jamaican ragga music; this inter-cultural mix, in turn, is framed by laid-back bass lines that can sound like Chicago-based house music in slow motion.

   • 2016, Gavin Steingo, Kwaito's Promise: Music and the Aesthetics of Freedom in South Africa, University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 43:

     The residue of this otherworldliness is still audible in contemporary kwaito, which consistently thwarts any simple identification with ethnicity, language, or social position.

2. (South Africa) The meme or milieu associated with the music style.

   Sivuyile is part of the kwaito generation.

   (The addition of quotations indicative of this usage is being sought:)

Further reading

• kwaito on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Noun

kwaito m (uncountable)

1. kwaito