When a video of Björk playing a Mapanta song during a DJ set in Venice went viral, I remembered a conversation I’d had with BLK JKS drummer Tshepang Ramoba about the dance music genre endemic to Limpopo. That short dive into Mapanta touched on its origins and the budding subculture that has emerged from it, but I was eager to know more. What exactly is Mapanta, and who is Serokolo 7 — the man behind its emergence into modern dance music?
Mapanta finds its origins in Limpopo electronic music that dates back to the 1980s. It served as celebratory music leading into tombstone unveilings and weddings, shaped by traditional Bapedi music like Dikana — which runs on drums, whistles and reed pipes — and Kiba, which centres on call-and-response vocals and drums.
Thapelo Ratseke, better known as Serokolo 7, grew up around this music in Ga-Sekhukhune. Even with it all around him, he gravitated toward contemporary electronic music from elsewhere in South Africa, starting his production journey by experimenting with Pretorian genre Bacardi house. But his time at initiation school changed his direction. The lessons on Bapedi tradition, and the cultural insight into the music, poetry and idioms, sparked an idea: bring Bapedi music into the modern landscape. “I decided to try and incorporate what I love with what is an everyday part of my life,” he says.
The result is Mapanta: a genre characterised by drums that hit at a whopping 180bpm, with beats that are grungy and grimy. What makes the genre so compelling is how it weaves poetry and nature sounds into the spaces between its breakneck pace. It’s related to Manyalo, though the distinction between the two is a grey area even for Ratseke, who’s less concerned with classification. He’s just making the music that he’s inspired to make.
His debut album, Maramfa Musik Pro, is an embodiment of this inspiration, and a celebration of his cultural heritage. Released this past April on Nyege Nyege Tapes, the album introduces how as Serokolo 7, Ratseke taps into Bapedi traditional music and gives it new life. Opener “Naba Ba Papedi” establishes this immediately. Behind the megawatt electronica is a backdrop of chanting by traditional healers, one of many field-recorded samples that anchor the project’s point of view. Elsewhere, animal sounds play a prominent role, cats and dogs among them, on tracks like “Magoko.” They bring the listener closer to everyday village life, while the poetry reaches for something deeper.
“Maramfa is a school I started to started to teach kids in the village to dance and produce music,” Ratseke explains. It lends the album its name. Serokolo 7 is deliberate about not forgetting this crew— his love for them is all over “Chunku Manabeng” and “Dinaka,” a track which references one of Maramfa’s dance crews, 10111.
Dance is central to Mapanta, and alongside the viral Björk clip, videos of dance crews and villagers dancing to the album have taken the internet by storm. The high-energy music is matched by high-energy moves. What viewers see is the best of a culture, a reminder of the potential that lives even in the smallest places in South Africa. “I hope to take Mapanta far and that my work encourages other young people to invest in their culture,” Ratseke says.
At its heart, Maramfa Musik Pro celebrates the things that shape where Serokolo 7 comes from. African cosmology runs through the sampled poetry and the dance culture around the music. Having been a dancer himself, Ratseke understands its significance. Because the genre borrows from music historically performed by traditional healers, dance becomes more than expression. It becomes a way to connect with something bigger. That marriage between the physical and divine gives Mapanta a multifaceted meaning, and Serokolo 7’s pioneering vision for the genre is offering listeners across the globe a rare glimpse into something sacred and endemic to his home.
Maramfa Musik Pro is a testament to innovation born from a love of one’s own culture, which in turn is being given wider depth by giving rise to an entire subculture. Endorsements from Boiler Room, which Ratseke played last month, and Nyege Nyege speak to how the love and care Serokolo 7 puts into making Mapanta has translated across borders and, for me, the untouchable magic sewn into it: the spirit of community.
In Sepedi, a belt is called lepanta. Much like lepanta holds clothes up, Mapanta holds the community in Ga-Sekhukhune together. And that spirit is spreading as more people become acquainted with the genre. What we are witnessing is a fast, exhilarating reminder of the power of music to create community, irrespective of where it comes from and who makes it.
