DJ Maphorisa and Kabza De Small are expected to make history on August 29 by filling the 50,000-capacity Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Pretoria for their highly anticipated music festival Scorpion Kings Live with Friends.
The amapiano genre has shone a spotlight on South African talent, and the two icons leading the genre are DJ Maphorisa and Kabza De Small, who have released some of its biggest hits.
Despite having separate careers, as a duo they are known as the Scorpion Kings.
The event will feature some of their friends and closest collaborators. Daliwonga, Young Stunna, Mlindo the Vocalist, Msaki, Kamo Mphela, Ami Faku and Phila Dlozi are all artists who have played a part in shaping the sound and spirit of their musical journey.
We are making history for amapiano
— DJ Maphorisa, aka Themba Sekowe
“This one is different because it’s not just another show — we are making history for amapiano. Loftus is iconic, having hosted some of the biggest moments in South Africa, so to step onto that stage with piano feels like claiming our place in history,” said Maphorisa, whose real name is Themba Sekowe.
“We’ve taken ‘yano’ to the world, but to bring it back home to our people is powerful. It’s a celebration of how far the genre has come and where it’s going. It’s also in Pitori, which is special to us because it’s one of the homes of piano culture,” said De Small, real name Kabelo Mahlangu.
“I am confident [we will fill the stadium],” said the musical director of the show, JR, real name Thabo Bogopa.
The Sunday Times got an exclusive preview of what the musical spectacular will be like from hearing rapper and fashion designer Mpura’s special dedication and Maphorisa and Kabza sharing a special moment to close off the show.
James Frank, the creative and show director, said the event would be a moment the country would remember for a long time.
He’s put own shows such as Beyoncé’s Global Citizen Festival, the Nelson Mandela Foundation Centenary, the Metro FM Music Awards, Dancing with the Stars, One Night with Mzansi (South Africa’s showcase at the World Expo), the presidential inauguration, and the Brics summit banquet and cultural presentation.
And now he adds Scorpion Kings Live with Friends to his burgeoning resumé.
“It is going to be historic,” he said. “Piano is first and foremost a community genre. You have tracks with a lot of collaborators. How the track comes together is this really crazy teamwork. Usually in a show you always focus on one artist, and everything is [based] around that person. If they have collaborators ... they come on and play second fiddle to the main artist. That is not the case with amapiano, where you have a lot of collaborators, each of them as important as the other.
“That sense of collaboration we’ve come to love from the tracks we’re hearing is now able to be expressed on stage, and that energy from creating collaborative performances over and over again has been a very rewarding experience for me.
“Amapiano as a genre is extremely young. We are sitting with superstars who have been made in only the last five years, and on the whole they are very inexperienced, because many of them burst onto the scene only as a result of amapiano. That brought with it an incredible energy in the build-up. Most of the artists arrive wide-eyed and hungry.”
“It’s also about opening doors for the whole movement,” said Kabza. “If we can do Loftus, then the next generation knows it’s possible to go even bigger.”
JR burst onto the scene as a rapper but evolved into an entrepreneur doing a lot of work behind the scenes at some of the most notable shows in the country.
“If you are working on a show of this magnitude, it’s never easy not to feel nervous,” he said. “The nerves and anxiety show you are working on something bigger than yourself. Whether it’s your first show of this nature or you’ve done many of them before, you need to get nervous on some level. It’s the first time something of this nature has happened.
“Amapiano is dance music. It’s a subgenre of house. It’s the grandchild of kwaito. It’s South Africa’s young people yearning to create something new. I don’t want to attribute the genre to any one source — we should look at it sonically as coming out of South Africa.”
“This event is a milestone,” said DJ Maphorisa. “For us, it’s about showing what’s possible — two kids from the kasi can dream big, work hard and fill a stadium. It pushes us to the next level as artists and leaders of the culture.”
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