Qkumba Zoo

The South African electronic dance trio Qkumba Zoo began to take shape in Johannesburg in the early 1990s when singer Levannah and producer/multi-instrumentationalist Owl began performing as Ocean Road. They were soon joined by Tziki, a dancer and visual artist, and became Qkumba Zoo in 1994. The created a sound that combined traditional native rhythms with electronic dance beats and sounds. They signed with South Africa’s independent David Gresham Records, and released their first album, BIG, in 1995 which featured a track called “The Child (Inside)”. That song would appear on their sophomore album, 1996’s Wake Up & Dream, which came out on Arista, and at that point the song would take off, becoming a hit in their home country as well as a number 1 dance track in the United States. After the suicide of Tziki in 1999, Owl and Levannah made 2000’s Butterfly Peepl, a darker album. The band became reclusive soon after; the group’s website disappeared, making Butterfly Peepl nearly impossible to purchase. 2009 saw the surprise release of N3X+. Owl relegated the group to a side project in 2013. In 2016, after much legal wrangling, the band made Wake Up & Dream available online along with Letthelightin, an album that when paired with the former contained the group’s entire recorded out put to that time.

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