At 4 a.m. on a Sunday at Club AM in Johannesburg, the crowd is not winding down. Instead, they are transfixed by Barbie Szn, who stands on a table beside the DJ decks, delivering rapid-fire vocals over the track “Can I see u” by Uncle Waffles. The song gets three replays, each layered with slang and energy that keeps the party surging.
The event, Umgqibelo, is one of several that have emerged since the pandemic, breathing new life into a gqom resurgence. The abrasive, skeletal sound, known locally as sgubhu, had its mainstream moment a decade ago with hits like Babes Wodumo’s “Wololo,” but it is now being sustained by queer-led spaces and ballroom collectives.
The Rise and Retreat of Gqom
Gqom was born in the early 2010s in Durban’s townships, including Umlazi, Inanda, KwaMashu and Clermont. Teenagers produced it on cracked FL Studio software in bedrooms, then distributed tracks through the city’s taxi network. The sound was stripped to its skeleton: no melody, no chords, just drums, bass and a looped vocal fragment that became hypnotic.
The wider world caught on in stages. European compilations introduced gqom to dancefloors abroad. DJ Lag took the sound on tour and eventually to Beyoncé’s studio. It appeared in a chase scene in the first Black Panther film. “Wololo” made it a national event in 2016, and Distruction Boyz pushed it to the top of the charts the following year. For a brief moment, the rawest sound in South Africa was also its biggest.
Then amapiano became the next dominant genre, and mainstream audiences moved on. Gqom, however, never disappeared in coastal cities like Durban, where it remained a staple alongside maskandi.
Queer Spaces as Safe Havens
Lelowhatsgood, a DJ and producer who grew up in Durban, experienced gqom’s arc in real time: in taxis, at raves, via Bluetooth file exchanges. He witnessed its peak and was present as it faded from the popular imagination. With VNJ Ball, an inclusive ballroom movement and recurring event series he founded, he aimed to carve out a space that was safe for queer people, femmes and non-binary individuals to live inside the beat.
“It was always queer people at the forefront, trying to keep this thing happening,” he says. “And obviously that doesn’t take away from anyone else who’s been trying to do their part as well. But for the most part, it’s always the voices that are never mentioned, or sidelined, that are carrying the torch and pushing it forward.”
He points to peers such as LIKKYLIKS, Barbie Szn, Thobeka, Babes Wodumo, SunOrnza and Cape Town’s DJ Abu. “Having Black women at the forefront of gqom, pushing and defying the odds in such a male-dominated field, is really great to see. I think it’s spaces like VNJ that give people those opportunities as well, to keep pushing those boundaries.”
Artists Carrying the Torch
LIKKYLIKS, an artist and DJ, says she always believed gqom would return to the mainstream. “But I wanted to take it upon myself to be one of the people that keep it alive,” she says. Even before she was a renowned DJ, she made a point of supporting headliners and artists playing in Johannesburg. “This is where the part of femmes and queers making sure that gqom doesn’t die comes in. When we would go to these spaces, it would be mostly us supporting these artists.”
Before dedicated gqom events like Gqom Therapy appeared, she recalls, “You would hear this one gqom set, and we would live for the crumbs. We were getting the bare minimum, but we’d be so happy, because we live for this.”
Parties such as VNJ Ball and Vogue Nights began platforming gqom beyond just consumption, booking artists from KwaZulu-Natal. “Within the crowd, without failure, you would see a lot of queers, you would see a lot of femmes. We would vogue to gqom and do ballroom to it because of how synonymous it felt to us as queer bodies,” LIKKYLIKS says.
Mx Blouse, an artist who would have been among those queer bodies, recalls early events, some held in secret under strict lockdown curfews. “Club AM means a lot to me. They opened around 2019, I think, and it kind of defined groove for me in Joburg, just to come listen to electronic music of all kinds,” they say. “This was the one place where I could go and just listen to electronic music I haven’t heard before, including gqom. It was just a fun experience, and I found that a lot of people that came here were about the music, enjoying the music. That’s how you form communities. I’ve met people I’ve worked with on that dancefloor.”
