Nthato Monde James Mokgata (born 14 May 1985), known by his stage name Spoek Mathambo, is a South African artist, producer, singer-songwriter and rapper. Mathambo rose to fame in the late 2000s with his fusion of a wide array of musical influences.[2] He is known for coining the term ‘Township Tech’,[3] to describe his sound. Mathambo hails from the township Rockville in Soweto,[2] a township at the outskirts of Johannesburg. The trombonist Jonas Gwangwa is his uncle.[2][4] Born in 1985, Mathambo grew up during the state of emergency in the final years of Apartheid. In the mid 1990s his family moved to Sandown an affluent suburb in Sandton, north of Johannesburg, where Mathambo attended St John’s College, Johannesburg. As a teenager Mathambo showed an interest in creative writing and music, both of which he kept practicing while first studying medicine at the University of Cape Town and later studying graphic design.[2] In Cape Town he became immersed in the local rap and electronic music scene where he gave his first gigs. Here, he also began to collaborate with Waddy Jones (later Die Antwoord), producer Simon Ringrose (known as SiBot) and Markus Wormstorm. The name Spoek Mathambo is derived from the South African sit-com Emzini Wezinsizwa which Mokgata liked to watch as a child.[2][5] ‘Spoek’ translates as ghost in Afrikaans, ‘Mathambo’ as bones or skeleton in isiZulu. Together, the name translates as something like ‘Ghost of Bones'[6] or ‘Ghost Skeleton’. In 2006, Mathambo and Wormstorm started their electro rap-duo project Sweat.X and quickly rose to national prominence by releasing various mixes on their MySpace site.[8] A year later, they signed to UK label Citinite, released their debut EP Ebonyivorytron and toured Europe. Another of Mathambo’s projects in the late 2000s was the duo Playdoe with SiBot (Simon Ringrose). Their debut mini-album It’s That Beat was released in 2008 at label Try Harder and followed by a tour through Europe.[11] The same year, they released the album Sibot & Spoek are Playdoe followed in 2010 by the EP African Arcade, both with label Jarring Effects.[12] Another album with the title Bubble & Freeze was released on Leonizer Records in 2010. Together with Starkey they released the EP Freeze Step in 2009. Teaming up with DJ Aero Manyelo and vocalists Carla Fonseca (aka. Manteiga), as well as, Nandi Ndlovu in 2015, Mathambo formed a new collective called Batuk.[52][53] According to Carla Fonseca, the band’s name Batuk means ‘drum’ in Portuguese.[54] To records its debut EP Daniel, released in early 2016, Batuk set up in Mozambique.[55] The EP was followed by a debut album Musica da Terra, also released in 2016, which was recorded in South Africa, Mozambique and Uganda, comprising collaborations with artists from all three countries.[56] The collective aims to use house music to explore different African sounds and unify them in a pan-African fashion.[57] In an interview, Mathambo explained: “The point of us mixing up these different cultures and languages is to show unity and to expose people, to make people not say ‘those are the other people’ but to say that ‘those are my people’.” Batuk continued as a duo consisting of Mathambo and Fonseca, who, in 2018, released their second EP Move!,[59] followed by a worldwide tour. Later that same year, the duo released its second album Kasi Royalty. After the pan-African approach of their first album, Kasi Royalty focuses on South African township sounds – Kasi is a South African slang term for township.
