If you’ve been following Texx And The City this year, you’ll have noticed that we’re a bit obsessed with Twenty One Children. The tenacious benefactors of a sub-culture that was facing extinction, Twenty One Children seem to have raised punk music from the ground, and for this alone they deserve the highest praise.
But there’s more. Their artistic pursuits are simultaneously a relentless expression of Sowetan identity. They represent Soweto’s vibrant, rebellious core, embodying a particular ethos of township angst that perhaps makes Twenty One Children the most exciting, most daring South African punk band right now.
Their genesis was rather fateful, and I use the word genesis deliberately. “Twenty One Children started after a 21-day stint at the loony bin for our guitarist Thula,” they say.
“Abdula was a substitute teacher at an autistic school at the time, and he had 21 children in his class. He had been asking for about three years to start a band, and finally Thula agreed. We then asked Jazz to join on drums, and our first official jam was on the 21st of February 2023.”
Since then, they’ve released two knockout EPs, music videos and performed a string of live shows, including a recent House Of Vans bill alongside Little Simz (???!!!), and they show no signs of slowing down. “We don’t think about songs. We just witness things and report on them in poetic and musical form,” they say.
Unfiltered guitars, raw and heady vocals, electric drum loops and a delicious live quality are the things that define Twenty One Children’s sound, all under the simple banner of punk.
It’s always been punk music for Thula, Jazz and Abdula. The electric conduit for an unadulterated mind. The community of noise-makers deeply attune with what it means to be subversive; truly subversive.
“Punk is DIY to the marrow because there are no platforms in this country dedicated to alternative music. We pretty much have to work together as bands, photographers, videographers, organisers, artists and clubs to get the movement going,” the trio tell me.
Perhaps it’s this lack of representation that fuels Twenty One Children’s politicised and experimental attitude. Being an artist has always privileged some kind of socio-political expression. There’s no denying it. Even the personal is political, as Carol Hanisch put it.
“Soweto is just rebellious in nature,” say Twenty One Children. “Kids with bricks fighting cops with guns. There’s no place like it. Everything starts there and spreads to the rest of the country decades down the line. Kwaito, house music, amapiano, even soccer, politics…”
They find themselves sitting on a cultural goldmine, spoilt for inspiration, and it’s this rich tapestry of life, of people, of place, that gives Twenty One Children their edge.
I call them the vanguard of Sowetan punk because the truth is that they’re breathing new energy into a genre and community which has been around for a very long time. Only it never received the recognition it deserved. Twenty One Children now represent and honour this legacy without compromising their integrity, and this is the mark of real artistry.
