Boom Shaka was a pioneering South African kwaito music group consisting of Junior Sokhela, Lebo Mathosa, Theo Nhlengethwa and Thembi Seete.
The style of dancing and dress stirred controversy among South African listeners as it invoked a type of female sexuality that many found degrading.
[12] Boom Shaka, being the first kwaito group and with the nature of the music they created, was able to unleash amongst young black consumers an explosive desire to disengage from the long years of oppression and political protest of the apartheid era.
In the process they emerged as the only South African musicians outside of the country's biggest-selling artist, gospel star Rebecca Malope, to own 75% of their master recordings and 100% copyright on their new material.
"[15] Boom Shaka's performance was described in an article in Mail & Guardian: "Stylishly clad in the deepest of blue velvet suits over lacy bras and flimsy white blouses held in place by at least one button — Boom Shaka's Thembi and Lebo (the two women members of the group) had walked slowly to the front of the large Civic Theatre Stage and then stopped, each raising a clenched fist in the air.
"[16] Boom Shaka's performance has now been credited as "moving the [National Anthem] from solemnity to celebration while also using experimentation to represent the unfinished business of liberation.
"[17] Xavier Livermon writes in his book Kwaito Bodies: Remastering Space and Subjectivity in Post-Apartheid South Africa (2020) that "through their performance, Boom Shaka insisted that the state be enacted more inclusively, pushing against its heteropatriarchal formation.
In speeding up the overall tempo of the song and performing it in an aurally unrecognizable register, Boom Shaka appears to move past the moment of triumph and offer an almost chaotic rendering of the anthem.
The faster tempo performs the labor of simultaneously marking the moment of achievement of moving the song from solemnity to celebration while also, in its chaotic unfamiliar rendering, revealing the unfinished business of liberation.
Hence, the aural register of Boom Shaka's version of "Nkosi" refuses to dwell in the moment of triumph through liberation and instead begins to ask questions about the practices of freedom.