In this day and age, social media has proven how a music career can now move quicker. A song can go viral on TikTok overnight, find an audience in another country through Spotify, and give an artist numbers that would have been difficult to imagine a generation ago.
Success can be measured in streams, monthly listeners, sold-out shows, social media followers and the ability to turn a local song into a global conversation. However, there is still something different about winning a South African Music Award (SAMA).
The SAMAs, established in 1995, have spent three decades doing something that streaming platforms and social media cannot quite do and that’s deciding, at least once a year, what South Africa considers worth recognising in its own music.
The importance of the SAMAs was highlighted by global pop sensation Tyla, who spoke of their significance in her own career ambitions while sharing her joy upon receiving her second International Achievement Award.
“This is my first time at the SAMAs, and I just remember being a little girl dreaming of this day. Obviously I had the dream of travelling the world and becoming a popstar but a big dream of mine was coming to the SAMAs and now I’m here so it’s another thing I’m ticking off, thank God,” she said.
Artists no longer have to entirely rely on radio, record labels or traditional media to find an audience. A song can travel through TikTok, accumulate millions of streams on Spotify and reach listeners in countries an artist may never have visited. Amapiano’s global rise is perhaps the clearest example of how quickly South African music can move beyond its borders.
This change does not make the SAMAs less important, it has actually given them a new purpose. In a music industry that focuses heavily on viral trends, the awards provide an essential space for South Africa to honour its own musical successes.
According to Unati Gwija, spokesperson for the Recording Industry of South Africa (RiSA), the organisation behind the awards, the SAMAs have effectively become a reflection of the country’s changing musical landscape.
“The SAMAs are essentially South Africa's musical mirror. The categories themselves have evolved with the country's musical landscape: amapiano and gqom, for example, eventually received dedicated recognition as those genres became major forces.
“And perhaps most importantly, the SAMAs create a national cultural occasion. SAMA32's return to the North West and its 'Homecoming' theme demonstrate that the ceremony can still become a physical gathering point for artists, audiences and the music industry,” Gwija said.
For 31 years, the awards have provided a formal record of the country’s changing musical tastes. The genres represented, the artists nominated and the categories created over time have reflected a music industry that has never stood still.
That history matters because South African music is too broad to be understood through one dominant sound at a time.
The country has moved through kwaito, maskandi, gospel, house, hip-hop, jazz, Afropop and amapiano, while musicians working in isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho, Setswana, Tshivenda and other languages have continued to build audiences around music that does not necessarily fit neatly into international categories.
A national awards ceremony creates a space where those different musical worlds can exist alongside one another.
Gwija argues that the SAMAs’ most significant contribution has been the institutional recognition of that diversity. She added that when the first awards were held in 1995, South Africa was entering a new political era. Over the decades that followed, the SAMAs became more than an annual ceremony.
They began to document the country’s changing tastes and generations, from jazz and mbaqanga through kwaito and hip-hop to house, gqom and amapiano.
In that sense, the awards have helped turn the broad idea of “South African music” into something closer to a national cultural archive.
That distinction becomes particularly important when global music culture is increasingly shaped by platforms whose priorities are not necessarily tied to the countries producing the music.
For an awards ceremony to remain meaningful, it has to understand the culture it is recognising. The SAMAs do not need to become another global awards show. Their value may lie precisely in being something different.
“A South African artist winning a Grammy is an extraordinary achievement, but the Grammy system does not exist primarily to interpret the particular cultural ecology of South Africa's eleven official languages, its indigenous musical traditions, its regional scenes and its complex history. A global award may tell the world that a South African artist has arrived. A SAMA can tell South Africa why that artist matters here.
“The SAMA should therefore be understood not simply as a competition but as cultural infrastructure. It creates a space where a Maskandi artist from KwaZulu-Natal, a jazz composer from Cape Town, a gospel group, an amapiano producer from Gauteng and a traditional musician from Limpopo can all be recognised as contributors to the same national musical story,” Gwija said.
The international success of amapiano, the continued influence of older genres and the emergence of new artists have made South African music part of a much larger global conversation.
However, global attention can also flatten the complexity of a country’s music into whichever sound happens to travel best.
A national awards system provides an important balance to that trend. It reminds us that South African music is defined by more than just international success; it is also the music that resonates with local audiences, in local languages, and through local histories.
That may be the most important reason the SAMAs still matter in 2026. An award isn’t more valuable than a million streams, but while numbers tell us what people are listening to, awards help us ask why it matters.
The challenge is making sure that the institution remains capable of asking that question as the industry changes.
Gwija believes the SAMAs should protect the things that have given them meaning over three decades: their institutional memory, diversity, national character and credibility, as well as their recognition of indigenous languages and genres.
That includes musicians who may never become TikTok sensations, as well as the less visible work behind successful records such as songwriting, musicianship, production, engineering and composition.
The ceremony itself is also worth protecting as a moment when the country gathers around its own music. However, preservation cannot mean standing still.
“The SAMAs must evolve from being primarily an annual television event into a year-round digital music institution. The future SAMA should therefore become a bridge between heritage and disruption, archive and algorithm, township sound and global sound.
“It should honour the veterans who built the industry while making room for the teenager producing beats on a laptop. It should recognise the established superstar and the artist singing in an indigenous language to a few thousand intensely loyal listeners,” Gwija said.
The SAMAs have survived 31 years because the music they recognise has never stayed the same.
Their relevance as time moves forward may depend on whether they can adapt to an industry that has changed beyond recognition, specifically by continuing to provide a platform for South Africa to reflect on its music and determine what deserves to be remembered.
nomathamsanqa.sithathu@nationalmg.co.za