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The Sounds of South African Kwaito

When you hear stories in the U.S. about South Africa, they tend to be about relatively few topics: the legacy of apartheid, staggering HIV and AIDS rates, intense crime and poverty.

At the end of apartheid, in the early 1990s, a new genre of urban music took hold in South Africa. It's called Kwaito, and was invented by the generation of black South Africans who came of age after the racial segregation laws were abolished.

This week, Sean Cole of WBUR's Inside Out documentaries brings us three reports on Kwaito, and how the music has come to define South Africa's youth. In part one of our series, he finds himself at an all-night outdoor concert chasing a man in a Balaclava mask.

This program aired on July 27, 2005. The audio for this program is not available.

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