Word.ws English Dictionary

kwela

kwela noun: a style of music, first played in the townships, whose principal instrument is the penny whistle.

Noun

kwela (uncountable)

  1. (South Africa) A style of music, first played in the townships, whose principal instrument is the penny whistle.

Origin of kwela

From Zulu -khwéla (“get up”).

Questions about kwela

What does kwela mean?
Kwela means a style of music, first played in the townships, whose principal instrument is the penny whistle.
What part of speech is kwela?
Kwela is a noun.

Words near kwela in the dictionary

  1. Kweichow
  2. Kweilin
  3. Kweiping
  4. Kweisui
  5. Kweiyang
  6. kwela
  7. kweng
  8. kwenged
  9. kwengs
  10. Kweni
  11. Kwentoh

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: kwela (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “kwela.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kwela. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.