TRI-CONTINENTAL 25.OCTOBER

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LOCATION WILL BE ANNOUNCED ON DAY OF THE PARTY IN THE FOLLOWING SOCIAL MEDIA GROUPS:

WHATSAPP
TELEGRAM

If you have no social media at all, please send email to ngomasounds@gmail.com with subject: TRI-CON INFO

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TRI-CONTINENTAL is devoted to the most advanced rhythm science from Africa, Asia, and South America.

During all of human history, various cultures have always traded goods, recipes, rhythms, ideas, and different peoples have always intermingled and intermarried. For millennia Africans, Arabs, Persians, Indians, Chinese, and Europeans did business and partied in metropolitan centers like Zanzibar, one of many such hotspots across the most vibrant exchange routes in the Indian Ocean. Until the 1600s, when the Portugese and later French and English, etc., choked off free trade by controlling all the major pots, and spread an ideology of cultural purity and ethnic essentialism, separating people into boxes — a process which has only intensified in our neo-liberal times.

Today in Berlin TRI-CONTINENTAL seeks to bring together people from migrant backgrounds and anyone interested in truly 21st Century dance music (rather than the same 50 years old Disco rhythm pattern), to enjoy real underground sounds from far away places, share ecstatic moments on the dance floor, build direct connections outside of the patronage and confines of state funded official institutions of liberal multi-culturalism.


The music we love is often made by poor people. While we do not agree with the occasional lyrical expression of violence, sexism, homophobia, etc., it does not stop us from playing the rich and meaningfully multi-layered music of the working class and under class, who are the inheritors of social dance cultures, the original collective sacred.

TRI-CONTINENTAL will take place at a sweet underground club in a popular nightlife neighbourhood, with around 250 capacity on the main floor, and 30 in the chill out area.

Because it’s an underground location, everyone must be very, very quiet while approaching and entering — we can not have any noise outside the door.

LOCATION WILL BE ANNOUNCED ON DAY OF THE PARTY IN THE FOLLOWING SOCIAL MEDIA GROUPS:

WHATSAPP
TELEGRAM


If you have no social media at all, please send email to ngomasounds@gmail.com with subject: TRI-CON INFO

See you on the dance floor 🙂

TRI-CONTINENTAL // 14.08.25

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The party that unites Africa, Asia, and Latin America is back for another irresistable spin around the world of polyrhythms and bass, from Afghanistan to Nigeria, from China to Brazil, from South Africa to Morocco.

Speaking of South Africa, this time our special guest is the inimitable GOJAS, who will weave for us an unforgettable sonic tapestry from the land of Gqom and Amapiano and beyond.

More possibilities for magic happens on the edge of town — come out to Roderich the only good bar of Pankow, only 10 minutes from the ring, with a nice sound system and no neighbours.

See you on the dance floor.

TRI-CONTINENTAL July 2025 / Roderich

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This instalment in the only cool club of Pankow, Roderich (only 10 minutes from the ring) with a great outdoors garden area, solid sound, and NO NEIGHBOURS.

With awesome special guest djs from the Caribbean and Brazil, I will be providing the African and Asian dance floor killers.

#amapiano #chaabi #cumbia #kuduro #dabke #bhangra #taarab #bailefunk #gqom #samri #chutney #afrobeats #reggaetón #kwaito #dancehall #bubbling #twerk #bassmusic #berlín

Tri-Continental Neukölln

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With the Tri-Con Djs bringing you the sweetest and heaviest, most advanced rhythm science from across The Brighter Nations, best vibes ever guaranteed in this loveliest of all little bars with a sweet ass dance floor.

Donations at the door easy

Mara Cruise

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In Lagos slang, “mara” means “crazy, wild”, and “cruise” means “fun, a good time”.

The loosely defined but at the same time distinct fresh style of music known as “Cruise Beat” or “Free Beat” began to spread from Lagos on TikTok and other social media around 3 or 4 years ago.

Cruisebeat is a kind of reaction against the by now ubiquitous and internationally popularised sound of Naija Pop with its slow tempos and languid, introspective, romantic themes reminiscent of Zouk/Kizomba. Instead, the younger generation is making music at much higher tempos, with cocophonous use of samples, and an irreverent, riotous modus operandi.

It is an unstoppable African hyper-modern DIY rave-virus full of raw, relentless energy, spreading through the streets of West African cities like a pandemic of boisterous sonic thrills and frenzied footwork. Rave With African Characteristics is full of rhythmic innovation, sonic adventure, crazy intensity, and ecstatic euphoria.

Clocking in on average at 1 or 2 minutes in length, the songs are not really “songs” as much as modular rhythmic pieces to be combined in infinite potential configurations. The elegance and integrity of this music is in its rigorous adherence to pure functionality: above all other concerns, the central objective is dance; and neither producers nor party goers ever lose sight of it.

But there is also something else, a central element of human creativity since the very advent of poetry and song, which has been almost entirely missing from European and USAmerican classical OR social music in the modern period and even for much longer: humour.

Cruisebeat features plenty of cheeky, looney, hilarious samples from Nollywood and elsewhere, childish, even toilet humour, and re-versions or remixes of funny, low-brow, and incredibly cheesy music such as “Crazy Frog” or “Happiest Year” by Jaymes Young (Don’t worry, I spared you from this one).

The artwork already delivers epic LOLz

Musically ranging from Yoruba percussive dexterity, classic African Rumba, and Amapiano influences to palettes from Acid Techno and Trap, sometimes within the same track, everything is done with unmistakeable and entirey unmatched African rhythmic dexterity and effortless compositional brilliance.

Ironic that music made so quickly and spontaneously should actually, often, at the same time feel totally timeless.

Bass of Islam Series 1 – 3

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Moon

This series of 3 epic mixes will not likely bring me any gigs, but you know I had to do it to ’em.

Predominantly Muslim music from Palestinians, Algerians, Moroccans, Syrians, Pakistani, Egyptians, Indians, Hausa, and Mongolians seamlessly mixed and juxtaposed as not only a tapestry of cultural cross pollination but a vision of future regional and cultural integration and unity.

Cat

Hypnotic and ecstatic Rhythmelodies in anticipation of increased West Asian, South Asian, South East Asian, East Asian, and African cooperation in matters of culture as well as economy, diplomacy, security. A sonic vision of a potential Asian Union as part of BRICS and rising multipolarity.

Tree

Freedom for Palestine.

Victory to the Axis of Resistance.

Micro Rave: Asian Invasion

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From Egptian farmer ritual ensembles to Syrian Debhka fire to Sufi pipes in Indonesia to enchanting Bollywood surrealism to Algerian music of anti-colonial resistance, the magic of very many rich Asian traditions meets the electronic avantgarde from these places. On Sunday come immerse in dozens of kinds of the most profoundly beautiful music on Earth that you will literally never hear anywhere else in Europe in a semi-enclosed garden space next to MauerPark.

Social Muscle Club Friday 16.02.24

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Co-moderating and playing after party for this social sculpture / performance event on Friday in Wedding organised by some super talented, friendly, and open minded people and curated by the inimitable Tatiana Saphir.

Check out photos from previous events in the series:
https://www.instagram.com/socialmuscleclub/

reserve tickets here (do it quick because they always go very fast – if it’s all sold out and you really really want to come send me a pm I’ll see what I can do):
https://www.uferstudios.com/de/dance/veranstaltungen/7d907c65-b740-437d-8ce8-d32124e3bbd3/

Igqomu – Class War

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Gqom is South African rhythm tradition shaped by and reflecting the social reality of neoliberalism under a corrupted ANC, after Mandela having had to make major concessions to foreign pressure, unable to carry out the land and property reforms that were central to his post-independence program — high crime rates, high levels of social tension and conflict, high levels of discontent and anxiety.

As manic, brooding, and heavy as the best doom metal, but you know, FUNKY. Some real scrunch-face type stuff with relentless energy; most definitely not for the faint of heart.

The structure of the music is just as crazy, in terms of innovation: almost no straight 4/4 patterns, instead, all triplets like house-tempo Juke/Footwork; sometimes there are major drum sounds that happen only once in a track (!!!); the drum rolls are often placed at the BEGINNING of bars rather than the end (!!!!!!); the 1 actually comes at 1.5 (!!!!!!!!).

I am super jealous of you: wish I was hearing this mix for the first time 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘

Futurism With African Characteristics TWO

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Futurism in Europe, the sonic avant garde, for the past half century or more, has proceeded on a total rejection of tradition. A cultural product of post-modernism and historical nihilism, the assumption rested upon is that the past is only shit and must be destroyed, wiped clean, to have tabula rasa – which is nothing but a fantasy, never mind the result of false understanding. So what we end up with at Atonal or Transmediale is an aversion to melody, a rejection of musicality, thousands of artists making bleeps, bloops, rigid, mechanical, inhuman forms, all of which mono-cultural, mono-rhythmic, and deeply pessimistic. But in the end, contemporary European electronic music, for all its rhetoric and pretence at “futurity”, fails to innovate, and is today in 2024 still near entirely reliant on innovations made 40+ years ago in Detroit and Dusseldorf — clubs are mostly still playing the exact same single untz untz rhythm pattern.

Futurism in the Global South is the opposite.

Firstly there is a formal revolution every few years in which new palettes, new rhythm patterns, and new dynamics emerge. In South Africa alone, we have seen radical new styles like Gqom and Amapiano within just the past decades.

Secondly, contemporary African electronic music is characterised by an EMBRACE of tradition, and not only those of the music makers themselves. In a heavy bass number, all of a suddent bursts of ecstatic deep jazz saxophone. Forms like Samba, Jamaican dancehall, etc., etc., are often alluded to and paid respect or re-interpreted. Angolan Kuduro often references Brazillian music as well as include Portugese influences; Amapiano encompasses near everything that has happened in not only African but also African American music during the past century, from jazz to house to hip hop and reggae, but done in unmistakeably South African ways.

The horrors unfolding around the world today in 2023 can be seen as the birth pangs of a new, more just and peaceful world to come.

Along with the final and real removal of colonial forces and increased cooperation with the multipolar world, we will see, are already seeing, authentic economic development, connection, and integration in and of the motherland. In the next decades to century or more, the humanist technologies of the Global South will thrive, multiply, and cross pollinate.

Now is a time to mourn, to struggle, as well as to celebrate the deep, world historic changes taking place, and what is to come.

We should dance not despite, not in trying to forget, the violence and sadness of current conflicts, but in the realisation that this is the end of the imperialist era; and in solidarity with the rise of multi-polarity, envisioning a bright future for the formerly colonised.

African Futurism ONE

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Futurism in Europe, the sonic avant garde, for the past half century or more, has proceeded on a total rejection of tradition. A cultural product of post-modernism and historical nihilism, the assumption rested upon is that the past is only shit and must be destroyed, wiped clean, to have tabula rasa – which is nothing but a fantasy, never mind the result of false understanding. So what we end up with at Atonal or Transmediale is an aversion to melody, a rejection of musicality, thousands of artists making bleeps, bloops, rigid, mechanical, inhuman forms, all of which mono-cultural, mono-rhythmic, and deeply pessimistic. But in the end, contemporary European electronic music, for all its rhetoric and pretence at “futurity”, fails to innovate, and is today in 2024 still near entirely reliant on innovations made 40+ years ago in Detroit and Dusseldorf — clubs are mostly still playing the exact same single untz untz rhythm pattern.

Futurism in the Global South is the opposite.

Firstly there is a formal revolution every few years in which new palettes, new rhythm patterns, and new dynamics emerge. In South Africa alone, we have seen radical new styles like Gqom and Amapiano within just the past decades.

Secondly, contemporary African electronic music is characterised by an EMBRACE of tradition, and not only those of the music makers themselves. In a heavy bass number, all of a suddent bursts of ecstatic deep jazz saxophone. Forms like Samba, Jamaican dancehall, etc., etc., are often alluded to and paid respect or re-interpreted. Angolan Kuduro often references Brazillian music as well as include Portugese influences; Amapiano encompasses near everything that has happened in not only African but also African American music during the past century, from jazz to house to hip hop and reggae, but done in unmistakeably South African ways.

The horrors unfolding around the world today in 2023 can be seen as the birth pangs of a new, more just and peaceful world to come.

Along with the final and real removal of colonial forces and increased cooperation with the multipolar world, we will see, are already seeing, authentic economic development, connection, and integration in and of the motherland. In the next decades to century or more, the humanist technologies of the Global South will thrive, multiply, and cross pollinate.

Now is a time to mourn, to struggle, as well as to celebrate the deep, world historic changes taking place, and what is to come.

We should dance not despite, not in trying to forget, the violence and sadness of current conflicts, but in the realisation that this is the end of the imperialist era; and in solidarity with the rise of multi-polarity, envisioning a bright future for the formerly colonised.

Peace in West Asia

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https://on.soundcloud.com/s7PvH

Music to die for, in celebration of life and a bright future for West Asia. These 3 mixes in the series were inspired by the rapproachement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the movement towards rapproachement between Syria and Turkey, and the recent developments in West Asia towards peace and stability after 40 years of continuing foreign invasions and bombs which destroyed hundreds of cities, killed tens of millions of civilians, and created hundreds of millions refugees.

https://on.soundcloud.com/REx2J
https://on.soundcloud.com/8sdN4

We Love Amapiano

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Amapiano emerged out of either Durban or Joburg in the recent 5 years or so. Jury is still out on which city – I’ve met Durbanites who swear on the graves of their ancestors that the sound is Durban, as well as Joburgians who say it was developed in Soweto, and popularised in the legendary Poniaza club (bigup bigup!!).

Musically, it is a response to the previous sound to dominate the South African scene for some years, Gqom, which evolved out of the rougher side of South African House, defined by a relentless and repetitive dark energy that might be described as African Berghain hard techno (though I am very aware of the problems of describing African electronic music by Western terms, it is what Western audiences can understand and relate to).

Amapiano swings the vibes hammer in the other direction: toward more “accessible” musicality, more melody, and drops the BPM from 130 down to exactly 114 (I would love to interview the pioneers on why this exact bpm which all Amapiano tracks seem to strictly adhere to).

Stylistically it is a superb vision of African Futurism which is decidedly the opposite of the futurism of European electronic avant garde, which is all about a REJECTION of history: minimalist bleeps and bloops that try to divorce itself from past genres. In stark contrast, Amapiano EMBRACES all of the African and Afro-diasporic modern traditions: including recognisable influences from Jazz, Reggae, Dancehall, Hip Hop, R’n’B, and even chart Pop.

But make no mistake: this music is revolutionary, in a structural sense. Amapiano turns many conventions on its head, most importantly, changing the relationship between the lower and higher ends, and reversing the roles played by the hats and the bass.

In Western modern dance music, the bass kick provides a constant repeating pattern (nearly always a 4/4 lol) on top of which higher frequencies float, doing variations within the sameness. The central passages of Amapiano tracks turns this on its head: the constant repeating patterns are done with the highs, such as melodic refrains, and it is the BASS which does variations within the sameness. Like the Mama Ngoma drum of the Congo, largest and heaviest of the family of drums, always doing the SOLOS, I believe this is a reconnection with ancestral African musical heritage.

Some people in Europe who are accustomed to edgy hardcore menacing moods in their club music seem to think Amapiano is too soft and “pleasant”… But they just don’t get it 🙂

For some reason the soundcloud embed isn’t working at the moment, so here are ghetto ass links to the 3 parts series 😀

AmaSunshine

AmaStorm

AmaRainbow

FUSION Festival 2022

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Sorry for neglecting this site for some time. There is a lot of exciting things happening with my dj work but just have been a bit overwhelmed with other projects. Much more soon!

But for now, any lucky people attending Fusion this weekend should know that Dj Zhao’s set will be Sat. night / Sun. morning from 3am – 6am, on the Salon De Baile stage.

Expect next level and all inclusive African Futurism.

See you there!