“Amapiano to the World”: A Movement in Afrodiasporic Space Dion

The phrase “amapiano to the world” is often used by practitioners to refer to the power of the musical form to travel across national boundaries and its potential to become a global phenomenon like hip hop or house music. Using Xavier Livermon‘s conception of Afrodiasporic space which argues that Africa is a “constitutive and continuous site of diaspora” and that those constructed and represented as indigenous are equal parts of such a diasporic space , as well as Gavin Steingo‘s “point-to-point” connectivity rather than the often represented “frictionless musical flow” , I examine amapiano‘s position in the world, noting how local music scenes are connected through global point-to-point networks . I discuss this in four sections titled; “Taking up Afrodiasporic Space: Kwaito in the world”, “Whatsapp Groups: Music and Noise”, “Amapiano from the World: Afrodiasporic Influences and Intertextuality in Banyana” and “Amapiano in the World: Constructing Local Meaning”. The first outlines notions of local and global in the kwaito literature. The second examines the use of digital spaces in the dissemination of amapiano, specifically Whatsapp group chats, and criticizes the notion of “frictionless musical flow” by highlighting the role of spam in obtruding the musical message. The third section examines the trajectory of Columbian singer Totó La Momposina‘s El Pescador and Curura through various localizations of meaning in European dance spaces into DJ Maphorisa and Tyler ICU‘s song Banyana. The final section examines spaces outside of South Africa’s appropriation of amapiano in the AMAFest festival hosted annually in the UK, the Nigerian form “Afropiano” and American hip hop and R&B stars use of the genre. Amapiano represents a local youth form which offers a “creative resistance to the forces of globalization” , while simultaneously using such forms to disseminate music, reworking them to create local meaning and playing an active role in the construction of new forms in Afrodiasporic space.