Short answers, pulled from the story.
Marabi was a musical style born in the shebeens of South African cities, primarily in the Sophiatown suburb, during the late 1920s. It emerged from the fusion of jazz with African traditional music in the illegal drinking establishments that served the Black urban working class after the 1927 law forbidding Black South Africans from entering licensed premises. By the 1940s and 1950s it was at its peak popularity.
Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika was written by Enoch Sontonga in 1897. Sontonga was an early modern South African musician who composed the hymn, which later became the Southern African national anthem.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo gained international recognition when American musician Paul Simon included the group on his Graceland album in 1986, followed by a world tour in 1987. Simon then produced their first US release, Shaka Zulu, which won the Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album in 1988. As of 2024, the group has received 17 Grammy nominations and five wins.
Kwaito is a variation of house music that originated in Soweto, Johannesburg, in the 1980s and went mainstream in the 1990s. It is characterized by slower tempos, African sounds and samples, deep bass lines, and vocals that blend singing, rapping, and shouting. Stars including Trompies, Bongo Maffin, TKZee, and Mandoza defined the genre.
Gqom emerged in Durban in the early 2010s, pioneered by producers including DJ Lag, Rudeboyz, and Distruction Boyz. It features minimal, raw, repetitive beats with heavy bass and does not use the standard four-on-the-floor house rhythm. In 2018, the South Korean boy band BTS incorporated gqom rhythmic elements into their track "Idol," and FAKA's gqom-influenced music was selected by Donatella Versace for the Versace Spring 2019 Menswear Collection.
Voëlvry, meaning "free as a bird" or "outlawed," was an Afrikaans-language artistic counter-culture of the late 1980s that opposed the National Party and conservative Afrikanerdom. It was spearheaded by singer-songwriter Johannes Kerkorrel and his Gereformeerde Blues Band, alongside Bernoldus Niemand and Koos Kombuis, and was named after Kerkorrel's 1989 regional tour.