Uncle Waffles: the amapiano champ

The show that sparked Waffles’ first viral moment was an unexpected turn of events. She was originally slated to play an opening set for SLADE, another artist Kreative Kornerr worked with, but her slot clashed with a different gig. Her team decided to find a different slot for her, and as fate would have it, a DJ scheduled for the 10:30pm primetime set had pulled out last minute, so there was an opening. Was she ready to take it? “I was very nervous because that was the first time I played for a crowd that would be that big,” she recalls. “Usually, I’d play for small parties, small pubs here and there. I remember I got to the venue and I went to Kai, and I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to play. This is peak time.’ And Kai was like, ‘Don’t be nervous. You can 100% do it.’ We prayed, and then I played. When I played, nobody was really watching me, because they didn’t know who I was. And then I got up on the step behind me, and I just started dancing to every song. I started singing every song, and people started paying attention to me. That set was only 30 minutes, so I tried my best to give my best within those 30 minutes, and then the next day, I woke up to the 20-second clip from that two-minute video that Zeus had gotten. A couple of hours later, my life was completely different.

Three years later, Waffles has grown into one of the most beloved amapiano acts of her time, embodying a larger-than-life charisma that has captured hearts across the globe, from Sydney to Soweto. Her sets are an exhilarating and immersive cultural experience that goes beyond simply playing music: quick-footed choreography, an animated stage presence, and stank-face expressions that make you want to enjoy the music just as much as she is. When people come to a Waffles show, they’re not just there to hear the music, they come to see her perform. For Waffles, her performance is how she connects the crowd to the story behind the music. “When you think of ’piano, the first thing you’re going to see is people dancing. So people immediately relate amapiano to these amazing movements that [they’ve seen] before,” she explains. “When I decided to start incorporating my performance into my sets, I wanted to make sure that people get the amapiano experience, and get it even though they don’t understand the words, or the music, and that has really helped. No matter what, people always understand dance because it’s a universal language.”