How Far Can Amapiano Go?
It was opening night at the Brooklyn Mirage, a seasonal rooftop night club in East Williamsburg. In the main area, about five thousand people were bobbing and waving along with an English d.j. named Chris Lake, who played a set full of muscular and rubbery dance tracks, rarely straying for too long from the unifying thump of house music. At around two-thirty in the morning, just as the revellers were starting to sweat, a smaller and stranger dance party was getting going in a dark room off to the side. Banele and Bandile Mbere, twin brothers from South Africa, took to a small stage, plugged in their gear, and cued up a track that resembled an alien variant of the music being played outside. The sound was sparse, tense, and slightly menacing, with a bass line that cut in and out of the mix...