South Africa has got it going on right now. Forget football (the country’s footballing heritage was decimated by apartheid), in 2010 it’s South Africa’s young party starters, streetwear entrepreneurs, dance music moguls, grassroots organizations, and Pan-African publishers who are attracting the eyes of the world.

South Africa has never considered itself anything but a First World country and this is what a new generation is out to prove. In our special South Africa issue, headline artists BLK JKS meet guitar hero Dr. Phillip ‘Malombo’ Tabane; international dance music stars Black Coffee and Culoe de Song provide an entry point into the ubiquitous house music scene; and in the beating heart of Soweto we meet the country’s future leaders. We also revisit the radical 1960s jazz players through Basil Breakey’s photography, the multi-racial 1980s hip-hop movement in Cape Town and highlight new movements like the Pan African Space Station.

Elsewhere in the issue, Bilal gets us all hot in the middle, DJ Spinn gives us a brief history of Chi-Town’s Footworkers and how he needs Juke Music All Night Long. There’s Sun Ra’s Arkestra, The Now Sound of Brasil, Colombian soundsystems and much more…

Pick up a copy here or at your local newsagent or record store. For all you readers in the US and Canada, we’ll be available in Borders and Barnes & Noble from next week, so there’s no excuses for missing out on SHOOK anymore.

As a taster, you can preview the whole magazine with this Issuu gizmo (click side arrow to flip page) and download the PDF onto your mobile phone if you roll like that.