The craze of the falling Malwedhe, the power of trends and the beauty of the song

If you’ve been around Africa lately, you would have noticed a certain crazed falling dance style where you literally fall flat to the ground as if to be dead or collapsed, and immediately rises up to continue the dance. It is done by nodding while sitting or standing, and then a sudden fall to the ground. This step is repeated at intervals as a particular song “Malwedhe” by South African musician King Monada, plays.

What did you just read? Exactly! Here’s why it’s crazy.

( I have a sickness)
( if you are dating me) ( I have a sickness)
( if you break up with me, you will bring up hidden sickness from far
( Don’t play with breaking up with me) ( I have a sickness of collapsing)
( If you break up with me, i collapse), the lyrics of the song goes when translated to English.

In order to avoid heartbreak, a stupid white lie about collapsing is told. So when you’re doing the dance and you fall to the ground, a certain sickness of collapsing is probably responsible for that. Funny!

The dance is associated to one particular song, that is “Malwedhe” by King Monada. This means that if “Malwedhe” is not playing, you can’t do the dance. It is similar to Patapaa’s “One Corner”, another song with a crazed dance style that blew across Africa sometime last year from Ghana. if “One Corner” isn’t playing, you’d basically appear to be a fool or maybe insane to onlookers if you rush to grind your privates to a surface in a front and back movement.

But a lot of Africans, especially those in Southern Africa have gone on to enjoy it, together with the humor that comes with it. It is crazy, but really funny.

The dance started off in Southern Africa and within days, like a wind, the craze is here in Nigeria and many other African countries. That’s the power of trends. Social media is largely responsible for this. It carries with it whatever interests people to climes way beyond their imagination. The creators of this dance style may not have thought that it would achieve this feat, but here it is, all because of trends and social media.

Asides the craze, “Malwedhe” is a beautiful song. It is nicely layered on Southern Africa’s Gqom sound. Gqom is a style of kwaito music that emerged a decade into the 21st century from the city of Durban in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. It features wavy and bass beats.

King Monada rode on the success of the Gqom sound which is gaining more and more appeal across Africa and some parts of Europe to be able to score this hit.

The “Malwedhe” dance is crazy and stupid. It does not dignify anyone instead it removes such dignity from people. It is fueled by the desire to be free which is enveloping the world at the moment, and it is aided by social media to carry out its degrading activities. But the music behind it is beautiful and it touches the soul.

Now it is left for you to choose. Are you going to listen to the music and ignore the dance, or are you going to do both? Now you have a choice to make.