In Helsinki days are getting darker and colder and it seems it’s always raining. Makes you feel out of energy. You gotta fight for your right to party!
DJ Malvado is a house music producer from Angola and his song Puto Mekie will be featured on Buraka Som Sistema’s Fabriclive 49 mix.
Spotted this on Masala blog. UK funky goes Congo?
Angola has the largest number of landmines in the world after Afghanistan. Nearly half of the land in Angola is considered too dangerous to walk on. Hundreds have been killed and perhaps as many as 80.000 injured with a serious disability.
Here you can see some Angolan landmine survivors dancing kuduru, awesome moves!
Angola was in civil war from the 1970’s to 2002 and it was one of the largest and longest armed conflicts of the Cold War. Angola has mines made in Russia, United States, South Africa, and Italy among other countries. There are many interests on Angola as it is the 2nd biggest oil producer in Sub-Saharan Africa after Nigeria and it is the 4th biggest diamond source in the world.
Malawi to London via France & Sweden…
Radioclit + Esau Mwamwaya = The Very Best.
The Very Best album Warm Heart of Africa is out and it’s beautiful. Their song Rain Dance features M.I.A. and I’ve been hearing it on radio a lot these days. Tracks Ntende Uli and Kamphopo are equally dope. Don’t know too much about their lyrics, but Kamphopo seems to be about Malawi Pride - Malawi is Esau’s home country.
This post is by our new contributor Femme Mafala who just returned from Africa, the home of kuduro, kwaito and… coupé-décalé!
Ivorian music has really for the first time taken over dancefloors all over Africa and some of Europe as well. At the same time Ivory Coast has been going through protracted political and military crisis, with debilitating social and economic effects.
Coupé-décalé appears around 2002 in a trendy African nightclub in the northeast of Paris. It was created by a couple of young immigrants from Ivory Coast, like Molaré, Bobo Sangui, Lino Versace, Solo Béton, Douk Saga.
Couper in Ivorian slang means to cheat somebody, décaler is to run away. The third word which comes all the time in the first songs of coupé-décalé – we are here to work. And travailler means distribute the money, throw the money away, share it with other people on the dance floor.
The beginning of this music was quite improvisational, it was a public show of improvisation, of dance movements but also of a new kind of music. The influence is quite Congolese at the beginning, but there is also an influence of zouglou music and earlier Ivorian music.
Only some months later after the first songs in Paris the same people went back to Abidjan’s nightclubs Ivory Coast and made themselves known by distributing money. It was also the beginning of the Ivorian crisis when civil war split the country between rebel-held north and government-controlled south, so there was quite a need for some distraction from images of war. Although the fighting has stopped under a 2003 peace deal, Ivory Coast is still tense and divided.
At the very beginning there was no political message at all. First of all coupé-décalé is music to dance to, to forget what is surrounding you. There are hundreds of different coupé-decalé artists and songs and dance moves and almost every song proclaims to be a substyle.
Coupé-Décalé is a quest for new values, there is a general quest that you can find in many songs for a common future like “On est ou là?” Where are we actually? What’s happening? Where are we? Coupé-décalé grabs things from all sides and current events, like 2006 it was Guantanamo: every time somebody shouts “guantanamo” you have to put your hands together like if they were tied.
The music shot to success during the political crisis that followed the attempted coup d’etat in 2002; the subsequent night-time curfew inadvertently spawned a musical movement for those locked inside the clubs until sunrise. Everything is possible in this world of coupé-décalé, and it’s possible in a very short time.
We played last night at Redrum by the invitation of Misf*ts dudes (big up!). This time our set was all about heavy dubstep and some tight ass kuduro. Here’s a few tracks we dropped.
Os Proletarios - Triba
DJ Cabos - Kuduro Underground
Dama S. - Danse Avec Moi, Kuduro
Yes, there is a kuduro group called Os Proletarios, “The Proletarians”. No idea what their lyrics are about, but no matter the topic, I’m sure their lyrics represent a proletarian point of view. Dj Cabos is from Cape Verde, now based in France. We posted a few days ago the music video of “Danse Avec Moi, Kuduro”. The song is from Dj Frédéric Galliano’s Kuduro Sound System album.
Got a post card from Ghana the other day. Suddenly, several people I know have been to Africa. One in Botswana, one in Kenya, one in Ghana. One is just about to return from Mozambique. But I think the country that attracts me the most right now is ANGOLA!
Angola is the home of some hard ass music. Kuduro means literally “hard ass”. We’ve previously written stuff about Buraka Som Sistema who come from Lisbon, Portugal. Without them many probably wouldn’t have heard about kuduro here. But the music style originates from Angola in the late 1980’s. It’s music that forces you to dance your ass off. They got some stupid fresh dance styles in Angola, something to learn from also for us in Helsinki.
Many of the kuduro artists seem to work on the axis Luanda-Lisbon. Puto Prata is one of them. He has collaborated with Buraka Som Sistema.
It’s postcolonial gangsta shit, every day. People living in slums, big corporations stealing the natural resources, governments being corrupt. I don’t know if kuduro artists are talking about this stuff, but the sound and the music video imagery seems to suggest this is music for poor people reclaiming their dignity. Ninguem nos controla!
Go here and get it!
They should have brought Buraka Som Sistema to Ilosaarirock that’s going down this weekend. Well there’s Dizzee Rascal and some others. Disco Deleuze has already seen BSS live, that lucky bastard.
Dj Mujava (about whom we wrote a few lines here) was supposed to pay a visit to Helsinki in the beginning of May - but it got cancelled. Some other time then, let’s hope! While we’re waiting for this, and for the next Hand Clap Low Conga night, here’s something to bump in your speakers. Cassablanca - Mzo Bullet!
Cassablanca - Mzo Bullet (mp3)
I don’t even know where Cassablanca is from - if you know something about him please let me know. This is the only track I’ve come across and it’s HUGE.
We still haven’t posted anything about DJ Cleo which is such a shame. We have to change this right now.
Prison revolt - just do it! A kwaito dancing prison revolt to be specific. The song of the video is from DJ Cleo’s first album Es’khaleni (2004). And here’s a couple of goodies:
DJ Cleo - I Approve (mp3)
DJ Cleo - Ruthless (mp3)
“DJ Cleo has been the most upfront, significant, and influential dance music producer in South Africa for the last six years at least (…)”
The Fader has interviewed Cleo. An interesting read, check it out.
“So ’94, the elections came, South Africa became a free country, democratic, and black people are in power. That was it. It’s like independence day. The music changed completely. Boom! Now, black people, we have a say, we have a platform. Now we can sing about whatever we want to sing about. Kwaito was born, you know? Who came up with the term Kwaito? I don’t know. Kwaito just means ‘hot’.”