The Best South African Music – 2021 – Vol.1

At the beginning of each year we reflect on what we think were the best South African songs of the previous year. 2021 was a refreshingly good year for South African music, with a divergent array of new music released. Whereas we featured 20 songs from 2020, this time around we are highlighting 30 songs which we think everyone should listen to. These are presented over two volumes of fifteen songs each, so that the listening experience is less daunting, fitting more easily into our often busy schedules.

This first volume includes several veterans of the South African music scene. The Springbok Nude Girls sum up the return to a semi-normal life after severe lockdown with “Emerging Submarines”, one of the 2021 singles from their Partypocalypse album. Lesego Rampolokeng and the Kalahari Surfers are back with Babylon Mission Report, their first album since 1992’s End Beginnings. “Perverse Chrysalis” is a good example of Rampolokeng’s insightful poetry against the backdrop of the Kalahari Surfers’ deft accompaniment. Tim Parr first appeared on the South African music scene as guitarist for Baxtop back in 1979 and has featured in several bands since then, including Ella Mental in the 1980s and the Zap Dragons and Colourfields in the 1990s. He has also intermittently performed as a solo artist, most notably with the release of his Still Standing solo album released in 1996. This mixtape features “Time”, a single released this year. Hopefully it will be the first of many more songs from the legendary South African guitarist. Another guitarist with a solid reputation, with several solo albums to his credit, is Dan Patlansky who will be bringing out a new album, Hounds Loose, in 2022. Here we include his first single and title track from that album, released in late November. Steve Louw has been a feature of the South African music scene since the 1980s, with his bands All Night Radio and then Big Sky. In 2021 he released a solo album, Headlight Dreams, from which “Crazy River” is taken.

Lead vocalist for Freshlyground, Zolani Mohola (The One Who Sings), released a couple of singles as a solo artist in 2021. “Remember Who You Are” is the song we have opted for here. London-based Anna Wolf released her first solo album, The Dark Horse (under the name Tailor), in 2012. Over the past few years she has re-emerged with songs released under her own name. One such song is “Gong”, a single released early in 2021.

Montparnasse Musique is a collaboration between Algerian-French producer Nadjib Ben Bella and South African DJ Aero Manyelo. Their self-titled debut EP was released in 2021 and sure to get you jiving around your living room. On “Bitumba” they team up with Congolese band Mbongwana Star to great rhythmic effect. In mid-2021 Mushroom Hour Half Hour were back with the album, On Our Own Clock. This oft-changing ensemble featured artists from London, Dakar and Johannesburg. The Johannesburg musicians were Asher Gamedze (drums), Siya Makuzeni (trombone), Zoe Molelekwa (keyboards) and Tebogo Sedumede (bass). Recording began in June 2020 in the three cities and the digital collaboration resulted in this 2021 album, from which we have selected “Ngikhethile”.

It has been a while since fellow Shifty singer songwriters Chris Letcher and Matthew VD Want have released solo material but in 2020 they teamed up with Letcher’s singer-songwriter partner, Victoria Hume, bassist Andrew Joseph and drummer Nicholas Bjorkman. What began as a live show to showpiece new songs by Hume, Letcher and VD Want led to the formation of Koppies and the release of an EP of six new songs, two each by the aforementioned musicians. On this mixtape we feature one of VD Want’s compositions, “# Time’s up”.

There are also a few songs by relatively new musicians. Indie singer-songwriter Nic Jeffrey contributes “Say Love”, We Kill Cowboys perform “Take”, and The Great Yawn contribute “Take My Money”. It is exciting to see the recent emergence of indie label, Mongrel Records, especially as they are signing an enjoyable array of refreshing new artists: Here we feature the infectious “The Day I Gave My Sister Away” by The Amblers (duo Jason Hinch and Justin Swart) and “Feel It” by the Filthy Hippies, taken from the trio’s 2021 album Animal Farm.

We hope you discover some new music on this mixtape and follow a path of exploration into the music by the artists you like, and be sure to support them. The second volume appears in two weeks’ time, so listen to this one so long, put it on repeat and see you again next time with 15 more great 2021 releases …

  1. Bitumba – Montparnasse Musique & Mbongwana Star
  2. Ngikhethile – Mushroom Hour Half Hour
  3. Perverse Chrysalis – Lesego Rampolokeng & Kalahari Surfers
  4. Emerging Submarines – Springbok Nude Girls
  5. The Day I Gave My Sister Away – The Amblers
  6. Hounds Loose – Dan Patlansky
  7. # Time’s Up – Koppies
  8. Feel It – Filthy Hippies
  9. Say Love – Nic Jeffrey
  10. Take – We Kill Cowboys
  11. Time – Tim Parr
  12. Remember Who You Are – Zolani Mohola
  13. Crazy River – Steve Louw
  14. Take My Money – The Great Yawn
  15. Gong – Anna Wolf

Songs about Radio on Capital Radio 604

On the 26th December 1979 Capital Radio began its official broadcasts from Port St Johns on the South African Wild Coast. The station made use of the apartheid government’s separate homeland policy to broadcast independent music playlists and news from the supposedly independent homeland of Transkei. This mixtape remembers Capital Radio with a selection of songs about radio which either charted or were playlisted on Capital Radio.

Despite Buggles claiming that video had killed the radio star, Capital revitalised the South African airwaves, not only with their much wider range of musical choice but also with their liberal news broadcasts. In both instances listeners got to hear things they wouldn’t hear on the apartheid government’s South African Broadcasting Corporation stations. Indeed, the Selector’s reference to ‘the same old show on the radio’, seemed to apply to the tired and conservative sounds of SABC’s Radio 5, rather than being applicable to Capital, who played reggae, ska, funk and other musical styles not heard on Radio 5 in 1980.

A few South African bands feature on this mixtape. Clout appear with a cover of Daryl Hall and John Oates’ “Portable Radio”, and Bite’s “Loud Radio” was the only featured song that did not chart on the Capital Top 40 Countdown, although it was playlisted in mid-1981. Nighthawk was a studio group put together to record a jingle for Capital Radio, with the words “The soundtrack of your life is playing on 604”. They turned the jingle into a fully-fledged song, changing the chorus from ‘on 604’ to ‘never ask for more’. And the Radio Rats achieved the only Shifty Records Top 40 chart song on Capital, with “Turn On The Radio”.

The full list of songs and month of entry onto the Capital charts is as follows:

  1. Video Killed The Radio Star – Buggles (Jan 1980)
  2. Pilot Of The Airwaves – Charlie Dore (Jan 1980)
  3. On My Radio – The Selecter (Jan 1980)
  4. On The Radio – Donna Summer (Feb 1980)
  5. Portable Radio – Clout (Mar 1980)
  6. Loud Radio – Bite (playlisted May 1981)
  7. Oh Yeah – Roxy Music (Sep 1980)
  8. Love On The Airwaves – Night (Jan 1981)
  9. Wired For Sound – Cliff Richard (Sep 1981)
  10. Radio Gaga – Queen (Feb 1984)
  11. The Soundtrack Of Your Life – Nighthawk (May 1985)
  12. We Built This City – Starship (Nov 1985)
  13. Radio Africa – Latin Quarter (Mar 1986)
  14. Make Me Lose Control – Eric Carmen (July 1988)
  15. Every Rose Has Its Thorn – Poison (Dec 1988)
  16. Radio Romance – Tiffany (Jan 1989)
  17. Turn On The Radio – Radio Rats (Apr 1991)
  18. Radio Song – R.E.M. (Dec 1991)
  19. Heartbreak Radio – Roy Orbison (Nov 1992)
  20. Hello (Turn Your Radio On) – Shakespears Sister (Nov 1992)