Firstly, let’s get this out of the way: RIP Lebo Mathosa.
She was just 17 when she stepped up alongside her bandmates to propel Mzansi pop music forward – and just 29 when she died in a car crash. We know she’s singing alongside the angels in heaven.
The remaining Boom Shaka members – judge Thembi Seete, the sweet-voiced Theo Nhlengethwa, and the gruff roar of Junior Sokhela – blessed our Idols SA stage in our finale on Sunday for a wonderfully reminiscent reunion of the excellent ‘It’s About Time’.
It was warmly met – even by our relatively young audience. That’s because the music is timeless.
Boom Shaka defined kwaito in the mid-‘90s with the above song and more. A genre initially defined by producers (a bit like amapiano) found a face – and it was beautiful.
That said, its producers on that early work, Christos Katsaitis (Ka), Don Laka (La) and Oscar Warona, as he was then known (Wa) were the core of Kalawa Jazmee.
We could wax lyrical about Boom Shaka all day long – hits like ‘It’s About Time’, ‘Thobela’ and ‘Makwerekere’ – not only defined the kwaito era but were a soundtrack to Mzansi’s liberation. When we were ‘Free’, as Lebo might say …
We HIGHLY recommend you just stream their discography on Spotify.
We’re blessed to have them, and thrilled to have Thembi on #IdolsSA – that Boom Shaka get-together goes down in history.
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