The Sunday News
Ngqwele Dube, Life Correspondent
AFTER opting for a rest from the microphone, former Achuzi frontman, Unity Moyo is back with a Gqom single titled Phez’ Kwe Gqom.
MaUzah, as Moyo is popularly known, completed recording the single last week and it will be available on online stores next week. The South Africa-based kwaito muso said he was moving with the times by jumping onto the Gqom genre, which is slowly becoming the latest dance-beat craze to hit the dance floors.
With kwaito music fading and house experiencing a lull, Gqom is setting dance floors ablaze alongside hip-hop that has taken the lead in the pop scene. Gqom is a style of house music that emerged in 2015 from the townships of Durban, South Africa.
The style features minimalistic and dark beats produced with software such as FruityLoops. It is seen as an evolution of homegrown South African deep house and kwaito
MaUzah’s track refocuses the spotlight on his singing career, after shifting to the decks and producing songs for other artistes when he built a studio in his Johannesburg base. The Entumbane-born muso’s single could be one of the dance tunes this summer as it has a catchy, infectious tune that easily gets one moving along to its rhythm, whether it’s the gently fingers thumping on the desk, the head banging back and forth or the feet going up and down.
MaUzah said he is retracing his early steps in the music industry when he entered the scene as a dancer.
“It is a dance tune that I am sure will get people rocking on the dance floor. There are three tracks on the single, the main track, an instrumental and house version. I will be releasing an album later this year and this is the first track. The timeline of the album release will be determined by the response by listeners to the song,” he said.
MaUzah said the track is already available on MTN callertunes and is working on bringing it to Zimbabwe.
According to redbullmusicacademy.com, the signature Gqom sound is a haunted groove built out of drawn-out synth drones, cascading tom and snare rolls and elements like chants or whistles. It often sounds like a continuous build-up with the menace of a drop that never comes, combining the trance-inducing, repetitive feel of the darkest tech-house with a spaciousness and tension akin to grime and early dubstep.
MaUzah teamed up with Masawuso Ngodzo and Norman Ngodzo to form Achuzi in the late 90s at a time when a wave of young local musicians were emerging on the scene buoyed by the 75 percent local content policy that had been introduced at the time. Despite registering some success with various songs they released and hogging the limelight, the going got tough and the group died a natural death but MaUzah clung to music while his colleagues moved on to other trades.
He has released two albums, Ebusuku and Survivor and released singles Gogogoyi Tasvika and Mastanda and Phez’kwe Gqom. After acquiring his own studio equipment, MaUzah has produced songs for several South African musicians among them Durban Nyts, Chester, Smalls Moneymaker and Bhiza among others.
