＂In mid-1990s South Africa, apartheid ended, Nelson Mandela was elected president, and the country’s urban black youth developed kwaito—a form of electronic music (redolent of North American
house) that came to represent the post-struggle generation. In this book, Gavin Steingo examines kwaito as it has developed alongside the democratization of South Africa over the past two
decades. Tracking the fall of South African hope into the disenchantment that often characterizes the outlook of its youth today - who face high unemployment, extreme inequality, and widespread
crime—Steingo looks to kwaito as a powerful tool that paradoxically engages South Africa’s crucial social and political problems by, in fact, seeming to ignore them. Politicians and cultural
critics have long criticized kwaito for failing to provide any meaningful contribution to a society that desperately needs direction. As Steingo shows, however, these criticisms are built on
problematic assumptions about the politicalfunction of music. Interacting with kwaito artists and fans, he shows that youth aren’t escaping their social condition through kwaito but rather
using it to expand their sensory realities and generate new possibilities. Resisting the truism that ＂music is always political,＂ Steingo elucidates a music that thrives on its its radically
ambiguous relationship with politics, power, and the state＂--Publisher’s website.
