Kwaito, hip-hop and television in South Africa: a case study of the Yizo Yizo 3 series and soundtrack

Resumo

This paper presents an analysis of kwaito and hip-hop on television in South Africa. Itemploys the locally produced Yizo Yizo as a case study to explore the intertextual relationshipbetween music and television. Yizo Yizo, a reality-based drama series, was groundbreaking inpropelling the experiences of black youth onto the national agenda. In representing what canbe described as ‘authentic township experiences’, the series utilizes kwaito, and to a lesserdegree, hip-hop, as signifiers of township and ‘essentially’ black youth experiences.Soundtracks to the series utilize both genres and local kwaito and hip-hop artists feature asthemselves. The paper adopts a discursive approach to exploring intertextuality and the waysin which meanings embedded in a television series are related to music and other secondarytexts and vice versa. It provides an overview of the television series and analysis of the mostrecent soundtrack (Yizo Yizo 3) specifically, in relation to the series’ educative andeducational value.