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December 31, 2007
Reminiscence (how beautiful it could be...)
When I listen to Loopless, Kika and Hugo's soul quartet, I reminiscence about the time when Lisbons "urban, black or electronic" scene started to bloom in 2000-2004. Optimism, creativity, forward thinking... well, not really, Lisbon is known to experience everything that pop culture produces with a 10 years delay. But still it was a good period for us, Nylon was an independent label that showed us that quality could put us into the map. The sound was beautiful, the design of their covers were conceptual and well done, distributed worldwide by Soul Seduction. Good reviews from the urban magazines, songs were featured in compilations such as REWIND! V.3 and Dj Kicks, Yes it was a wonderful period. Loopless, Spaceboys, Type, Precyz (Preto and Cyz collab) were the first to take the sounds from this southern part of Europe (frequently confused with Spain) to another level and for the first time we thought it would be possible to achieve a higher ground. Loop Recordings introduced Bulllet in '02, and when the group started to tour around Portugal, we all felt that the scene was growing well and strong. Sam the Kid blessed us with Beats Vol. 1 - Amor also from the Loop camp. Sonar Festival '04 in Barcelona featured Bulllet and Micro Audio Waves who won the Qwartz Electronic Music Awards in Paris (best album & best videoclip) with the album "No Waves". Things were going slow but steady. Lil John went to Sãõ Paulo to represent the sound of Bairro Alto and surroundings in the Red Bull Music Academy. Hipnótica build the bridge with Austria and Wolfgang Schloegl aka I.Wolf form the collective Sofa Surfers became their favorite producer. After that came the desert... Few concerts, few bands and little projects and songs that were pushing or reformulating the idea of the Lisbon sound. Now we wonder what went wrong! I look to us and honestly I don't see that much change, beside that we are older and that Buraka Som Sistema took us to Glastonbury and Roskilde and are now on the age of being absorbed by London's' music scene, always starving for the new. We still believe in the same indie-pop clichés. We have Africa and Europe clashing, but very little comes form this impact. I think that 5 years ago and now we're still too busy trying to sound like something else from somewhere else... Do we really need to search for the Lisbon sound or are we too blind to see that it's already here.I think we just should listen more to our own music and learn with it.
Posted by info at 05:20 PM | Comments (2)
December 27, 2007
Lisbon Boyz (and the winner is...)
Lisbons Street Art movement is approaching a new territory. The writers are more creative than ever. The galleries are opening their doors or let's say, their walls and allowing the street artists to tell their colorful and urban stories. I love to be part of this because it's happening now. Mini International Magazine did an issue about Lisbon and I did an article with Vhils and Target. They were very kind and took me on a tour to the LEG street gallery. After that by coincidence, I crossed with Ram and Mar in Angola. They did exclusive limited edition t-shirts for Buraka Som Sistema that we later used in the BSS video that we filmed in Luanda with Se Bem's Kuduro dancers.
Posted by info at 08:35 PM | Comments (0)
December 26, 2007
Luanda Boyz (and the winner is...)
Dipanda © Kiluanji Kia Henda
Luandas new art scene is rising strong! The Trienal de Luanda, revealed many contemporary artists, young, dynamic and starving for the new. I had a chance to see their work and their new attitude towards Angolan culture, African art and the way this generation communicates with the western countries. Absolutely inspiring. Oh yes... Asia is here too!
Check them out here
Jah Love © Yonamine Miguel
Posted by info at 05:16 PM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2007
Enchufada Boyz (and the winner is...)
Yes 2007 it's over, Happy New Year everybody! Let's celebrate the good things that happen in the last 12 months. I got my outfit already, pics are coming soon. I got my dancing shoes shinning, I personally salute online shopping. I got my favorite djs getting ready for the last night of the year, the best, freshest, sexiest banger tunes are here. We got the Möet on ice... it's PARTY TIME! and we have another reason for rise the glasses and salute the good taste. Check FACT magazine top 100 track of 2007, BSS rules!!!
Pedro aka Busy P head of Ed Bangers Rec, Just told us that SebastiAn is bringing fire for 08, stay tune.
and the award for best club promoter goes to... Mr Shaun from Fabric
Zumbi Ya, the 3th part of Enchufada Yes Sir! and Chris rocking the house
i love this pic, MIA Tour Newcastle, UK
Luanda, land of the Kuduro and Tarraxinha! Znobia is a true innovator his skill and vision took the genre beyond and caught our attention. September 07 BSS went to Angola and did a little session at ZB's place in Terra Nova, Rangel.
JFK from Mstrkrft and Lil
Posted by info at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)
December 20, 2007
Cooltrain Crew - The Lisbon of our days (edited)
Marginal is the one who writes on the margin,
Leaving blank the page
So that the landscape may run through
Clearing it all with its course
Marginal, to write in between lines,
Without ever really knowing,
which came first,
The egg or the chicken.
Paulo Leminski (Brazil, 24/08/1944- 07/06/1989)
As we cast our gaze though the Lisbon’s urban scene, very little jumps to sight. Almost everything can be summed up in a little area of two tenths of a square mile. With seventeen and eighteen century buildings and a number of inhabitants which nears 3632 — famously known as Bairro Alto. During the night, however, the number of visitors may peak at 10 000, ranging between 14 and 40 years of age. A curious fauna, colorful and consumer which attracts most of the night investment to this area of the city.
But Bairro Alto doesn’t strive exclusively at night. Because it entails a fair number of art galleries, restaurants, bookshops, art schools, cafes, design shops. Because it is the natural extension of one of Lisbon’s most visited areas — Chiado, and consequently the neighborhood has become the right place for anything modern, trendy and fashion.
In every tourist guide, Fernando Pessoa’s and Almeida Garret’s Chiado is considered one of Lisbon’s most cosmopolitan areas. A usual hangout for writers, artists, intellectuals, musicians and all sorts of bohemians since times immemorial.
Due to its location and historical weight, Chiado is regarded as a natural tourist and native arena for a mid afternoon stroll. Savor an espresso, bask in our Sun’s remaining rays. The latter shining 364 days a year. One other aspect which makes Chiado a center is the fact that in it one will find its Contemporary art museum, A Brasileira – one of the most old and famous cafes in Lisbon, Fabrica Features/Benetton and so on.
Returning to Bairro Alto and its nights. Here, fashion and its intervening folks, alternative artists, cinema, theater and dance people, pimps, musicians from rock to jazz, drug dealers, the mad, the Fado houses with its melancholic songs of longing, the healthy tanned boys spawned by good families, the curious — all share the same space, in apparent cosmopolitan harmony. A place where urban tensions only serve to increase the myth surrounding these half-a-dozen streets. It was this scenario, this chic decadence, that saw the birth of the Cooltrain Crew collective. With one sole idea: to embrace urban music and fuse it with other artistic expressions; elevating it to the next level.
Drum and Bass was the genre which served as the structure for the adventure, in a time where London was becoming the established centre of the most creative dance music. In this genesis, D’n’B marries Up tempo sampled breakbeats of old funk and hip hop records with reggae bass lines, fused with electronic sounds from the early ninety’s rave scene.
In Lisbon all these urban manifestations happen with considerable delay.
One of the collective’s prerogatives was and remains, the struggle to sync up with the most stimulating and urgent music productions, wherever these may occur. Ranging from Hip Hop, Reggae Nu-Jazz, Nu-Soul, Broken Beat, Trip Hop and all the labels one employs to define contemporary music. From the outskirts of the great metropolis to the world. Music which does not sit on past glories, music which strives in constantly jeopardizing the institutional structure, the norm.
In the beginning there was the vinyl. The loved object, worshiped, idolized, for which and with which we grow crazy. An addiction, a disease, a virus which does not kill, but slowly consumes. A part of us which knows us in retribution. Vinyl is the center of all the relationship we establish with the surrounding world, the bible whose missing pages are still being written. A bible from which some vital pages have strayed, demanding that we surrender to the pilgrimage so as to complete the missing chapters.
The organic relationship between hunger and feasting turns clubs, places of pure and uncompromising enjoyment, into temples where the faithful, the music lovers congregate, in a semi-religious ritual, celebrating their existence by marrying both mind and body.
Cooltrain Crew, beyond clubbing and the organizing of musical events, has in its portfolio an extensive radio experience. Having been present in all the cult radio stations of Lisbon City. In former times it also acted as a major distributing entity for labels such as Far Out, Moving Shadow, Creative Source, introducing in Portugal, among many others, names like Marcos Valle, Azimuth, Easy Rollers and Caliber. But for reasons which deal directly with the inner workings of the music industry and its various oscillations — independent distributing companies have to deal with a very limited working scope. Music, however, lives and draws from the people and it is for the people that the work goes out for.
Events with names the like of Randall, Digital, 4 Hero, Lemon D, was the manner found to feed the grassroots movement as well as serving as creative trigger for subsequent journeys.
Other worries within the collective revolved around the relationship with Spain. The Tagus river is not the only common factor shared with Dali and Gaudi’s homestead. In 2003 the first Iberian Drum and Bass tour took place with 3 Spanish collectives. Madrid’s Plural Form, Valencia’s Gorilla Club and Seville’s Selecta. Beyond the obvious cultural affinities, our main goal was to prove that joining the Iberian Peninsula under the same vibe is feasible and highly recommended. Ever since, the trade with Spain has been increasing, as well as the network with other crews of other European countries.
But the Dj does not feed solely on parties. Natural evolution states that Dj’s will evolve into a stage where they will produce their own themes. Hence, the collective is now mostly focused on producing. The last 5 years were very productive. 80’s Pop Artists, contemporary Jazz bands, rock and soul singers, allowed a Drum and Bass reinterpretation of their tracks by the Cooltrain Crew. Part of that work collection will be released in the spring of 2006 by Cooltrain Rec, relying on Zounds Records and Sabotage as the distributor for the portuguese territory.
Everything starts and ends with the Jazz. Be-bop for the new millennium is an idea which resonates in everything we set out to create. Be-bop as movement, attitude, rhythmic and harmonic innovation, old tunes as the ground layers for more complex sound structures. A profound belief that sampling has always been in the process of every great change undergone by modern music. From Swing to Avant-Gard. Miles Davis to Bernardo Sassetti. From Matthew Shipp to John Coltrane, the saxophone genius, spirit which inspired the collective’s name and whose work still serves as an example and beacon.
The oldest and most experimental Cooltrain residency, has as its motto, narrowing the relationship between jazz and all urban cultural manifestations. Dj’s, Video Artists, Mc’s, Poets, together with the best portuguese jazz instrumentists. They all gather every Wednesday at the “Bicaense” a little club in the heart of Lisbon, to bring some fresh, necessary, vintage groovy vibes together.
The sound emanating from the CTC studios merges with this city’s pulse, it feeds on its emptiness and cravings, mingles with seventeen century’s cobblestone dust and back alley narratives. It feels like a voice which whispers softly to the world as though revealing a lover’s secret. The music which rolls down these hills is made by Lisbon folk for the Lisbon of all worlds.
Wrote the original article for Zoot#3 2006
Posted by info at 11:28 AM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2007
Kuduro Re-Evolution
In 1999 Kuduro made it's first debut with "A Felicidade" (Happiness) by Se Bem. The song took mainstream audiences by surprise and allowed for a genre, usually exclusive to african parties, to be impregnated in all layers of society.
I remember being in the Coliseu dos Recreios one of Lisbon's most emblematic venues during the 1st African Awards ceremony when Se Bem stunned the audience by winning Best Revelation Artist award that evening, homage was paid to all the big names of the Portuguese ex colonies culture scene. And one, whom is not considered a musician in the full sense of the word, wins a prize of this magnitude, well... Nobody knew how to react. Se Bem went on stage accompanied by his dancer Salsicha and provoked an explosion of rhythm and color in the Coliseum. Everybody was dancing like crazy, and then, when he felt everyone was at his mercy. he left refusing to go back to the stage even with the roaring crowd calling him back. from that moment on, I was convinced that Kuduro would change the way we perceive modern Angola.
The essence of Kuduro is a fusion of Kilapanga - traditional Angolan rhythms, and techno. But forget about the sophisticated Detroit Techno. Everything that this style of music is able to produce, from the most basic to the most complex rhythms have been assimilated and then translated to African context by a generation of new musicians helped by cheap computers and hacked software.
From the beginning Kuduro involved distinct body movements, Luanda's ghetto youngsters created dance moves to follow the accelerated techno rhythms that Djs were playing in the dance hall. These moves, where the ass in the focus of the body, caught fire in the clubs, contaminating everything and everyone. From up-scale parties in the Mussulo's island to Lisbon's African Clubs, the slogan that has ruled ever since then is "to dance kuduro one needs a hard ass".
Most of the Kuduro artists don't get radio airplay, nor is it easy to find their records in the shops. The reason, stated by the artists themselves, is linked to the fact that Kuduro portrays Angola's street living in a raw manner without constraints or self-censorship. The explicit nature of the lyrics and the rudimentary way in which the music is produced, generates consumptions barriers to Kuduro within Angola itself.
Without solid promotion Kuduro is the sole property of night clubs, but somehow Kuduro is still able to escape the dance hall: one of the best promotional means are taxi drivers, who use Kuduro as the soundtrack to tackling everyday traffic in big cities sush as Luanda and Benguela.
Black Market, low quality CDs are the other channel of promotion. The most emblematic is Roque Santeiro Market, one of the biggest open sky market in Africa. There, one can find everything: from synths and PCs to the techno tunes that feeds Kuduro producers all over Angola. Everything starts and ends in Roque. The same is replicated in Lisbon. One finds a large number of Kuduro productions in peripheral markets such as Praça de Espanha, Feira do Relógio or Moraria, places inhabited by ex-colony immigrants. There is no copyrights protection, no way of knowing how much of Kuduro records are sold therefore it does not register in the charts. The web is becoming the most appealing channel for Kuduro promotion. Just google the work "Kuduro" and you'll get an idea of the number of productions out there.
Dog Murras and Helder o Rei do Kuduro are atists who produce and live kuduro in a convetional way, under the wings of Vidisco, Portugal's biggest African Music label. With a solid distribution system, they are able to sell 20.000 records. Dog Murras says Kuduro's biggest enemy is piracy, because it prevents artists from make money out of the music they create. Others disagree, and argue that Kuduro was born freely and those imposing music industry rules are killing the freshness that feeds the genre. Opinions are divided, but every Kuduro lover agrees on one thing: Kuduro is the biggest culture manifestation of Angolan origin in modern times.
10 years have past since I first heard Dj Amorim's Kuduro being played in Lisbon African discos, and 7 years since Se Bem's explosion of rhythm in Lisbon Coliseum.
Kuduro with is hallucinating rhythms and pop riffs is here to stay.
The proof is seen in clubs when Buraka Som Sistema are performing their progressive Kuduro twisting and adding new elements that seduce another public, mainly white and black middle classcs kids that cannot stand the roughness of the original sound.
Bonga , one of Angola's biggest and most respected living musicians, said to crowd in one of his last concerts in Lisbon, that Kuduro's slang is the language that a generation of Angolans will adopt in 2010, whether we want to or not - this gives you food for thought.
Songs by Puto Prata , Noite Dia, Os Lambas and Dj Znobia, mirror the urgency and revolt inherent to the African reality. But however harsh the content of songs may be, there is an optimistic denominator to all of them in finding a path out for a generation that knows little more that 30 years of civil war.
Kuduro represents hope for the young generations, just like Hip Hop and UK Drum and Bass to many who grow in the urban outskirts of big cities.
In Lisbon, Kuduro is becoming the sound that better represents the mixed-race living of the suburbs surrounding the city. African presence in those neighborhoods is historical and cultures do mix.
Buraka Som Sistema have been approaching Angolan Kuduro under global permises, bringing it closer to Broken Beat, Drum and Bass, Grime, Dub-Step and even Funk Carioca. The latter was also born out of urban social tensions, breeding and multiplying with rudimentary means until it was able to conquer an audience usually unawere or skeptical towards ghetto production. Major producers, such as IG culture and Diplo have been following Buraka Som Sistema's music closely, and believe that it's ready for the masses. The fact that the collective has dubbed it's music as "Progressive Kuduro" has also helped in this quest.
Kuduro is closer to dance music than world music. These artists will make a significant effort to distance themselves from that, because the world music market still sells Africa as exotic, romanticizing the idea of lost continent.
Kuduro's beauty lies in it's rhythm, what the boys did was exchange the djambes and African drums for japanese beatboxes. They now sing about an Africa that is poor, reinventing itself amidst the smell of everlasting gunpowder, hovering like an invisible cloud over the garbage of every African Metopolis; everything National Geographic documentaries and CNN newscasts fail to show. It is probable that most artits will never make a living from the music they produce and Kuduro will remain confined to the universe of piracy. Maybe an urban music "Peter Gabriel" will discover the genre and divulge all that Kuduro has to offer.
Wrote this article for Zoot#4 2006
Posted by info at 06:22 PM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2007
Beniko Tanaka... HAKA!
Haka! performances are a poetical challenge for us and the ones that make to our show start to know that all the performances we do are unique and we always try to go to new places and join other artistic forms into our recitals.
The last show we did, started with Hugo Antunes dropping one of his solo compositions. Beautiful and deep! During that me and Nástio went to the public and start telling secrets to some persons on the audience.
After that we went back to the stage and jumped on some intense social poetic slam, about our relation with europe or the relation of two african poets with the old continent.
After 25 minutes, we left the stage and started a tape with conversation that we pre-recorded in that afternoon about the concept behind the Lisboa Mistura Festival and the real meaning of this "mixed Lisbon" idea. 10 minutes passed and then Beniko walked into the stage dressing a traditional Japanese costume to announce the end of the show.
Posted by info at 12:07 AM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2007
Haka @ Lisbon
HAKA! @ S. Luis Theatre. 30/11/07 It's always nice to perform in Lisbon. I'm at Glasgow airport and about to get inside the plane. No time for more pics but soon I will find a net spot I upload some.
Posted by info at 11:03 AM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2007
Sad News! Marina left Bonde do Role
Domino Records posted this info:
Following the departure of Marina, it is with great regret that Bonde Do Role have had to cancel their Australian tour.
The band will no longer be continuing with the same format, and remaining members Pedro and Gorky are currently working hard to recruit another person.
Bonde Do Role have had an incredible year and have been through some unforgettable experiences together, and still remain friends. Gorky says: "we really are so sorry for canceling the shows and to disappoint our fans. We're gonna try to make it up to everyone as soon as we can".
Posted by info at 02:40 AM | Comments (0)