At the National Museum, Skit Kabomo and Hydro Molefe offered a preview of two very different singles, but one shared mission: making Setswana music feel alive, immediate and unapologetically now.
GAZETTE REPORTER
At the National Museum in Gaborone, the past got a fresh soundtrack. Skit Kabomo and Hydro Molefe gathered an intimate crowd for a first listen to music that digs into Botswana’s cultural roots without getting trapped there.
The two artists are arriving with radically different stories. Yet both understand the same thing: tradition doesn’t need rescuing. It needs room to move.
WHERE’S THE LOBOLA?
Skit Kabomo’s debut single, “Magadi,” turns a lobola presentation into a family drama with a wicked comic edge. A young man arrives expecting to witness the presentation of his bride’s dowry cattle, only to discover his uncle has sold them — and spent the money on women.
Cue the public reckoning: “Magadi a go a kae?” (where is the dowry?)
It is uncomfortable, funny and devastatingly familiar, using traditional storytelling to hold a family and its contradictions up to the mirror.
Kabomo describes his sound as a meeting point between the cattle post and the smartphone era.
He said: “I am not modernising tradition. I am restoring it. The production is just the suit. The story is the man.”
That philosophy runs through his music, where Setswana call-and-response, chant and percussion collide with cinematic contemporary production.
LOVE, BUT IN SETSWANA
Then comes Hydro Molefe’s “Darlie,” a softer kind of revolution.
Short for “Darling,” the Afro-pop-influenced Setswana folk-pop track is a straightforward declaration of love — no irony, no clever escape route, just emotion in the language people actually use.
Born and raised in Old Naledi, Molefe draws from Botswana’s traditional dance, percussion and folk music, folding those influences into an introspective Afro-contemporary sound.
“Darlie” arrives on September 2 through X3mix Records and opens the door to his debut album, due in Q1 2027.