Who started amapiano music? What was the first amapiano song? who brought amapiano to Nigeria? Who started amapiano dance? Where did amapiano start?
These are all difficult questions, but today we’ll try to explain how amapiano became popular in South Africa and who started it.
Amapiano has strong origins in South Africa, with sounds that contributed to the birth of the new genre dating back to the 1990s. In South Africa, music genres evolved in stages; there is Afro house, deep house, tech house, gqom, and a new genre called amapiano.
Somehow, Amapiano and Gqom have a history; the genre’s origins can be traced back to aspiring DIY producers who experimented with a variety of rhythms in order to appeal to their target audience.
These DIY producer made amapiano beats and sounds and shared on Whatsapp groups, made bootlegged CDs and premiered some of the sounds in clubs.
Then amapiano was more popular in popular Whatsapp groups like Amapiano Music, Amapiano World and Amapiano Fan Base.
These could also be possible because there was no intervention of any record groups, nor labels and no body to place some kind of copyright or claim or ownership or anything of that sort, legally – it was just freestyle from many unheard young talented South African song producers.
In it’s early days, the genre gained popularity in parts of Gauteng, with no legal claim of ownership, and the manner of it’s start up, there’s a lot of ambiguity concerning its history, but we can account that the genre came from South Africa and different styles of amapiano was majorly known in places like the Johannesburg townships – Soweto, Alexandra, Pretoria etc.
Though there are not group of persons to give credit when it comes to the history of Amapiano, we can actually have a list of amapiano producers, Djs, singers to thank for getting the sound across the globe.
Some talented artistes who through their popularity improved and marketed amapiano to the world include; MFR Souls who was said to have came up with the name ‘amapiano’ and popularized it.
Dj Maphorisa who moved from making Gqom and Hip-Hop to joining hands with Kabza De Small (a more talented amapiano producer) to master the art of amapiano and making it more popular by forming the Scorpion Kings; also real about who Madumane is in amapiano,
Focalistic,
Calvin Fallo,
DJ DBN Gogo,
Kamo Mphela who was among the first to start the amapiano dance challenge,
Semi Tee, Maino, Kammu Dee who made Labamtwana Ama Uber and a lot others like Mr Jazziq who came into the picture later.
Stay tuned as we write anout who brought amapiano to Nigeria.
Also check out Amapiano 2021 : List Of Best & Top New Piano Mix, Songs, Album, Mixtapes