Pantsula dancing and kwaito go hand in hand. Both emerged from the townships of Johannesburg, and both were forces of joy and genius during desperate times. When kwaito landed on the global main stage around the turn of the millennium, star acts like TKZee, featured pantsula dancers in their hit music videos like the brilliantly upbeat “Dlala Mapantsula.”
Mahlubi “Shadow” Radebe and Zwelakhe “Malemon” Mtshali were two dancers from the township of Tembisa, in northeastern Johannesburg, who decided to transition from the shuffling and low movements of pantsula to singing over kwaito’s laidback hip-hop-meets-house swagger. But to do that, they would need to upgrade from their beat-up cassette player to an actual,…