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 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.
With a strict focus on intimate dancefloors, this mid tempo mix (along with its faster sister which will soon arrive) connects Afro-Jazz and Techno, Soul and Bass, Highlife and Electro, Disco and Ancestral drumming in ways you’ve probably not heard before.
Nyege Nyege Festival in Jinja, Uganda, is about the infinite and timeless rhythmelodic traditions from the motherland and its myriad mutations around the globe, and their sometimes difficult to perceive but indivisible connection. It is my duty as rhythm ambassador to reveal the truth about these connections between ancient and future, between the so-called “East” and so-called “West”, in a visceral way on the dance floor; and it is what i have tried to do with this mix.
In the ongoing rebirth of explicit poly-rhythms and super syncopated percussive goodness in African-American music, B-more/Philly and Newark/Jersey Club is a particularly sexy and fun permutation, and has been gaining momentum for a number of years, bursting with musical and dance ideas. Vice just made a documentary and in 2015 i think it will finally invade dance floors all over in a big way. (Next month i will be playing the first Vice sponsored Club Jersey party in London – stay tuned)
179 killed by institutional racist violence for the crime of trying to live in the drugs and guns infested poverty that white supremacy keeps them in, during the past 15 years, In NYC alone. How many disabled? In comas? How many with missing lungs or bullets in stomachs? How many broken ribs/arms/legs? How many physically assaulted? Abused in custody? How many terrorized? Humiliated? Incarcerated?
Industrial nightmares and Shamanic visions collide in the club. Ancestral voices bleed through grids of the city. Diasporic sounds and mutant rhythms transformed by migrant movement, shaped by history. Fragmented Psychotropic Bass pulsating through the deepest valleys and highest crests of your mind, in the kaleidoscopic center of the omni-verse. RSVP on fb
Evil twin of the last MUTANT mix of brightly hued, sun-kissed club music for endless summer nights, Meta House is heavy, narcotic. Including lots of deep techy tracks, some jacking, bassline, healthy dose of ghetto, a touch of shuffling, and material which may be in the category of “House Not House” — but as abstract or bassy as any part of it may be, i made sure that all selections are primarily, unmistakably House – all steady kicks and offbeat hi-hats.
This how we voodoo, this how we juju:
From Chicago to East London, from Jersey to Berlin, Juju-Juke brings true school rhythm and bass.
Joining us for the first time: Cool Hand Luke straight from Brooklyn will bring true underground club sounds from New Jersey, in addition to the Chicago Tek Life vibes; Congolese/French MC Carmel Zoum will deliver fiery verses on the mic; and Berlin’s own NGHT DRPS wil drp crucial new school bass and footwork.
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NGOMA Sound feat. MC Carmel Zoum
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NGHT DRPS (Through My Speakers – Berlin)
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Cool Hand Luke (Hot Crew 57 – NYC/Chicago)
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Dj Zhao (Ngoma Sound – Beijing/Berlin)
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Out in the streets Out in the streets Out in the streets Out in the streets…
From South Chicago to East London, from Detroit to Berlin, Dj Zhao and friends bring Polyrhythmic Bass Pressure connecting Footwork, Jungle, GhettoTech, and Drum’n’Bass.
Fuck the future, this is NOW.
Dj Zhao: Edits, Mixing and Selection (Berlin) Werner Puntigam:Trombones (recorded in Linz, Austria) Marcel: Percussion (recorded in Berlin)
A hybrid musical entity made of dj and live instrumentation consisting of 2, 3, 4, or 5 members, NGOMA Soundsystem fuses Ancestral Rhythms, Acoustic Textures, and Urban Bass Pressure. Drawing from both the wealth of sonic traditions from Africa and beyond as well as up-to-the-minute street sounds worldwide, NGOMA Soundsystem exists in the tension between electronic composition and live improvisation, creating unique “Ancient-Futurist” musical experiences for both concert hall and club, often at once mind expanding and dance-floor smashing.
this recording is a 1 hour studio edit of the 3 hour live performance at Fusion Festival:
Grounded in the rhythmic traditions and tonal language of North Africa and the Middle East*, Djinn Bass fuses Sufi Ritual Music and Club Beats, Sacred Egyptian Hymns and Abstract Dub, Classic Rai and Dubstep, Turkish Taqsim and Tech House, Moroccan Chaabi anthems and Tribal Electro. Ouds, Flutes, and Darbukas mix and blend with electronic pulse; vocal refrains underpinned by digital bass, sometimes chopped, looped, and dubbed out. Decidedly anti short-attention-span, as the FUSION series have increasingly become, the tracks are long because duration is essential for the ecstatic and immersive nature of this music.
Rhythms born of the tropics grow up in colder urban climates: A re-newed attention to percussion is appearing on the many different shores of Northern Hemisphere electronic dance music; as a new generation of artists in the US and Europe channel, re-interpret, and recontextualize Afro-diasporic drumming traditions according to their own local sensibilities, reaching to complete the mother continents’ circle of musical influence.
In Detroit and Chicago intricate percussive patterns are growing right between the rigid 4-on-the-floor, snare-on-the-2 beat. Evolving directly from street level forms such as Ghetto-Tech and Booty-House, new drum sounds integrate with the cold and hard latices of industrialized assembly line structure – among others, the exceptional track by The Grizzl and J. Phlip is a perfect example. interlocking microscopic beat segments by Afrikanized robot drummers are revitalizing increasingly impoverished styles like Hip Hop and Techno, machines under duress reaching new states of intensity. Juke may be a freak mutation, a strange autistic grand child of Afrikan music with a mechanical brain and artificial limbs, and is itself giving birth to new hybrid styles both at home in the US and abroad (many of the tracks here fall in this one-step-removed category of Juke-inspired music). Addison Groove brings streamlined house tempo footwork; while Chicago artists like Wheez-ie and Brenmar from the Movelt Posse come with their Juke inflected club music sometimes more informed by Afrikan urban music than anything from America – one listen to 28 – Bak it In or 16 – So High will convince you.
In Europe, the UK-Funky movement is in full swing, with its obviously Afro-Caribbean derived beat propelling the dance forward, represented here by mainstays Roska and Doc Daneeka. in Germany artists like Mode Selector, Dark Sky, and Schlachthofbronx are formulating their own Afro-Teutonic sonic worlds, sometimes reflecting the cold and sun-deprived climate of their homeland. There are also micro strands of European producers making direct interpretations of Afrikan styles such as Angolan Kuduro, exemplified here by Diamond Bass and Portuguese artist Roulet. Besides proponents working within genre delineations, there are many exploring unclassifiable areas between them. For example UKG legends Bias and Gurley’s “Roll” remixed by Blackdown is a frankenstein monster borne of Garage and Juke, Sampology with the epic and all encompassing “Transatlantic Skanking Dub”, and Gremino and Baobinga & I.D.’s hard edged mutant Afro-Bass.
Northern Tropikal is either the lastest chapter of the continuing story of the original Afrikan pulse spreading, pollinating, multiplying, or “western” urban nomads accessing deep memories of Motherland rhythm heritage within the harsh reality of concrete jungles. Which ever perspective you choose, one thing is clear: Afrikanized Killer Beats are on the swarm.
01 Intro Feat. The Ill Saint
02 Bias & Gurley – Roll (Blackdown’s A Debt Repaid Remix)
03 Photek – U.F.O. (Addison Groove remix)
04 Addison Groove – Make Um Bounce
05 Dark Sky – The Lick
06 The Grizzl And J. Phlip – Bakupgrl
07 Modeselector – Art & Cash (Roska Remix)
08 Wireless Sound – Chicago
09 Lars Moston & Philipe de Boyar – So Sick (Douster Remix)
10 Randomer & Fife – No Sleep
11 Headhunter – Locus Lotus
12 Roska & Untold – Long Range
13 Diamond Bass – Stereotype
14 BD1982 – Calenture (Pacheko Remix)
15 Brenmar – At It Again
16 Brenmar – So High
17 AC Slater & Mumdance – Transatlantic Riddim (Instrumental)
18 Sampology – Transatlantic Skanking Dub
19 Doc Daneeka – Drums In the Deep
20 Pariah – The Slump + XXXY – Constant
21 Same Tiba – Barbie Weed + Onyenze – Onwa Nna Na Nwa – (Schlachthofbronx Remix)
22 Brenmar – Like It Like That
23 Dillon Francis – Westside
24 Onyenze – Onwa Nna Na Nwa – (Schlachthofbronx Remix)
25 Gremino – Ruffness
26 Baobinga & I.D. – Tongue Riddim
27 Addison Groove – This Is It + Berou & Canblaster – Kapongo Dance
28 Wheez-ie – Bak It In
29 Rusko – Cockney Thug (Buraka Som Sistema Remix) + Dj Assault – Ass ‘n’ titties
30 Buckfunk 3000 and Si Begg – High Volume (VIP Mix)
31 Makongo – Angolan Kung Fu (Dubbel Dutch Remix) + Dj Godfather I Keep Bangin The Beat
32 Roulet – Oasis
33 Scuba – Ruptured (Surgeon remix)
34 30Hz Mutate(d) (Pinch Re-work) / Outro Feat. The Ill Saint
NGOMA SOUND 