 | |
| Editor | Sbusiso 'The General' Nxumalo, Nicole Turner, Sandile Dikeni |
|---|---|
| Categories | Cultural Magazine |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Founded | 1998 |
| Country | South Africa |
| Language | English |
Y-Mag is a South African magazine established in 1998 from a joint partnership between Studentwise, publishers of white youth targeted SL Magazine , and black youth targeted Johannesburg radio station YFM.
Published under the pay-off "Y - because I want to know", the magazine was targeted to tap into the market that made YFM the biggest regional station at the time. This was what was referred to as the Y Generation, a "freedom's children" that got to celebrate the freedom of an apartheid-free South Africa. As poet Lebo Mashile explained:
"if we were 20 or 30 in the 1970s and 1980s we would have been using everything we had to fight Apartheid... but now we have the freedom and space to do what we want with our talent and we have the ability to really manifest our dreams..."
Under founder editors S'busiso 'The General' Nxumalo and Itumeleng Mahabane, Y quickly came to encapsulate this spirit of freedom of expression. Like YFM, its emphasis was on urban street culture with a strong focus on the sounds of post-apartheid black South Africa, especially Kwaito. Written in spoken English with drops of Scamto, it was filled with diverse youth interests without ever narrowing them down to just entertainment. From the relationship between kwaito's apolitical, "hedonistic and flighty preoccupations", to President Thabo Mbeki's macroeconomic ideology, and to the politics of fashion and the aesthetic of struggle, this publication is very well rounded.
This radical challenge to the binary opposition of political/apolitical placed Y a step or two ahead of other mainstream magazines, intended for both black and white audiences. This also meant that corporate advertisers remained at arm's length. Inevitably, the magazine gave in to market pressures and changes at the radio station. Both Nxumalo and Mahabane stepped down as editors. Since then, Y has continued under no less than eight different editors, but it has never recaptured the idealism or attitude of those first few issues.
The music of South Africa exhibits a culturally varied musical heritage in conjunction with the multi-ethnic populace. Genres with the greatest international recognition being mbube, isicathamiya, mbaqanga, afrofusion, kwaito, South African pop music, afro house, South African hip hop, Shangaan electro, bacardi house, bolo house, gqom and amapiano.
South Africa is known for its ethnic and cultural diversity. Almost all South Africans speak English to some degree of proficiency, in addition to their native language, with English acting as a lingua franca in commerce, education, and government. South Africa has twelve official languages, but other indigenous languages are spoken by smaller groups, chiefly Khoisan languages.
Kwaito is a music genre that emerged in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, between the late 1980s and 1990s. It is a variant of house music that features the use of African sounds and samples. Kwaito songs occur at a slower tempo range than other styles of house music and often contain catchy melodic and percussive loop samples, deep bass lines and vocals. They are also very similar tempos to early 1990s NYC house tracks.
Bonginkosi Dlamini, known professionally as Zola 7, is a South African kwaito musician, actor, writer, TV presenter, and poet. Dlamini began his career as an actor, achieving national recognition for the television series, "Yizo Yizo". He also starred in the Academy Award winning film Tsotsi in 2005, for which he also wrote the musical score.
The mass media in South Africa has a large mass media sector and is one of Africa's major media centres. While South Africa's many broadcasters and publications reflect the diversity of the population as a whole, the most commonly used language is English. However, all ten other official languages are represented to some extent or another. Afrikaans is the second most commonly used language, especially in the publishing sector.
YFM is a "Youth" radio station in Johannesburg, South Africa. Established in 1997, the station is formatted to mostly play urban music genres such as Kwaito, Hip Hop, and R&B along with a minority of its airtime being dedicated to talk shows. As noted by the name, the station's core audience consists of young South Africans.
The 2002 Soweto bombings were a string of terrorist attacks that occurred in Soweto in South Africa's Gauteng province. Eight blasts took place on 30 October 2002, leaving one woman dead and her husband severely injured. One of the blasts severely damaged a mosque, while others targeted railways and petrol stations in the area. SAPS prevented one blast. Another bomb later detonated outside the Nan Hua Buddhist temple in Bronkhorstspruit, east of Pretoria. A white supremacist group, the Warriors of the Boer Nation, claimed responsibility for these explosions in a message sent to an Afrikaans newspaper.
Drum is a 2004 film based on the life of South African investigative journalist Henry Nxumalo, who worked for Drum magazine, called "the first black lifestyle magazine in Africa". It was director Zola Maseko's first film and deals with the issues of apartheid and the forced removal of residents from Sophiatown. The film was originally to be a six-part television series called Sophiatown Short Stories, but Maseko could not get the funding. The lead roles of Henry Nxumalo and Drum main photographer Jürgen Schadeberg were played by American actors Taye Diggs and Gabriel Mann, while most of the rest of the cast were South African actors.
DRUM is a South African online family magazine mainly aimed at black readers, containing market news, entertainment and feature articles. It has two sister magazines: Huisgenoot and YOU.
Tsotsitaal is a South African vernacular dialect derived from a variety of mixed languages mainly spoken in the townships of Gauteng province, but also in other agglomerations all over South Africa. Tsotsi is a Sesotho, Pedi or Tswana slang word for a "thug" or "robber" or "criminal", possibly from the verb "ho lotsa" "to sharpen", whose meaning has been modified in modern times to include "to con"; or from the tsetse fly, as the language was first known as Flytaal, although flaai also means "cool" or "street smart". The word taal in Afrikaans means "language".
Benjamin Pogrund OIS is a South African-born Israeli author.
Boom Shaka was a pioneering South African kwaito music group consisting of Junior Sokhela, Lebo Mathosa, Theo Nhlengethwa and Thembi Seete. They released their first single "It's About Time" in 1993, and subsequently released their debut LP, titled "Kwere Kwere" in 1994. Boom Shaka was one of the most successful bands of the mid-1990s in South Africa. Their music was the soundtrack for many young people in the newly democratic South Africa. The group was viewed as representing "the hopes and dreams of a people after liberation". Boom Shaka also achieved international success in London, among other places.
Henry Nxumalo, also known as Henry "Mr Drum" Nxumalo, was a pioneering South African investigative journalist under apartheid.
John Arthur Mogale Maimane, better known as Arthur Maimane, was a South African journalist and novelist.
Thandiswa Nyameka Mazwai is a South African musician, and is also the lead vocalist and songwriter of Bongo Maffin. She is also known as King Tha.
Racism in South Africa can be traced back to the earliest historical accounts of interactions between African, Asian, and European peoples along the coast of Southern Africa. It has existed throughout several centuries of the history of South Africa, dating back to the Dutch colonization of Southern Africa, which started in 1652. Before universal suffrage was achieved in 1994, White South Africans, especially Afrikaners during the period of Apartheid, enjoyed various legally or socially sanctioned privileges and rights that were denied to the indigenous African peoples. Examples of systematic racism over the course of South Africa's history include forced removals, racial inequality and segregation, uneven resource distribution, and disenfranchisement. Racial controversies and politics remain major phenomena in the country.
Scope was a South African weekly men's lifestyle magazine. The magazine was launched in the 1960s and was controversial for challenging Apartheid-era South Africa's strict censorship laws with its bikini-clad cover girls. The weekly was published in Durban by Republican Press until its final issue in 1996. At its peak, it was South Africa's best-selling English magazine, with a circulation of 250,000.
Pantsula is a tradition and also a highly energetic dance form that originated in the black townships of South Africa during the apartheid era. It developed into a form of social commentary for black South Africans and has undergone several transformations with the country's changing political tides.
Leslie 'Lee' Kasumba Leslie "Lee" Kasumba is a Ugandan radio and TV presenter, media personality, writer, singer, and songwriter in Africa.
Khabzela: The Life And Times Of A South African is a bestselling 2005 biography written by South African author Liz McGregor about South African disc jockey Fana Khaba, who died from AIDS.
Material in this article is duplicated from chimurengalibrary.co.za, which is released by GFDL.