More to the floor: the decade the dancefloor was decolonised
In the first half of the 2010s, the western world dominated the conversation in electronic music. White, male producers and DJs, often based in
London, New York or Los Angeles, mostly controlled the barriers to entry, and took music from foreign cultures without consequence. Diplo, cherrypicking from baile funk, dancehall and reggaeton and tailoring each rhythm to suit an English-speaking market, is the most high-profile example of this appropriation, but he is just one of many white producers in the postinternet decade who dabbled in different cultures with boyish insouciance they regarded drop-crotch trousers, curtained hair, or any other passing trend.
In the second half of the decade, however, multilateral club scenes from Latin America, Africa and east Asia have come to define the global underground, each pressing their native sounds towards the razor’s edge with confidence and technical prowess.
This exists, in part, thanks to collectives such as NON and Naafi, who loosened the western stranglehold on dance music. Alongside America’s
Chino Amobi and South Africa’s AngelHo, UK musician Nkisi conceptualised NON in 2014 as a pan-African, “borderless state” that was intent on “decolonising the dancefloor”. Their incendiary manifesto and militant sound, which included sundry genres from mutant dancehall to the sparse architecture of South Africa’s gqom style, moulded their cadre into something akin to the Black Panthers of clubland – all of which was bound up in red, Sovietreminiscent agitprop.
For NON’s label collaborators, black liberation meant denouncing their citizenship from the countries, institutions and social spaces that had subjugated and erased black and brown bodies. No matter their origins, they found solidarity by sublimating what they called the “reverberations of racialised violence” into music-making and DJing, with a nonhierarchical structure.
The Mexican collective Naafi (short for No Ambition and Fuck-all Interest) can be seen as NON’s Latin American counterpart. Founded in 2010 by Tomas Davos (who DJs as Fausto Bahía), Lauro Robles (AKA Lao), Paul Marmota and Alberto Bustamante (AKA Mexican Jihad), it emerged into western consciousness mid-decade. They, too, condemned the insidious effects of colonialism in the industry.
“In Latin America, anything coming from the media or music was something that was created in the Anglo world,” Lao said in 2016. Nahuel Colazo, co-founder of HiedraH, an Argentinian collective affiliated with Naafi, says: “Among my friends, it was common for Latin music to be looked down on. If you listened to a lot of Latin music, you were weird. Tthere was something wrong with you.”
What he refers to is the type of music that threw Naafi into the global club spotlight. Initially, the crew spun South African house, Angolan kuduro, drum’n’bass and techno before suffusing their sets and productions with the thrum of more local rhythms. Listen to one of their mixes and you might as easily hear Guadalajaran trap by Jarabe Kidd, or a bootleg mashup of Yaviah’s reggaeton track En La Mía folded into Nicki Minaj’s Truffle Butter instrumental.
Their focus on showcasing regional genres, as heard in the Prehispánico, Guarachero, and costeño genres in their 2014 tribal compilation, was a rebuke. Tribal music was associated with the poor tastís of the working class, and, according to Lao, not something that the government sees as important or appropriate for the culture in Mexico. Among mainstream, white-washed Mexican DJs and producers, it was wiped from club contexts. Naafi, however, wanted to do justice by tribal music and save it from
dience couldn’t wait to get in and half the audience couldn’t wait to get out,” presenter Alain “Fusion” Clapham announced.
Jointly organised by LJF promoters Serious and Koestler Arts, the UK’s leading prison arts charity, the concert was recorded for broadcast on National Prison Radio.
The event took 18 months of planning and security was tight. Those attending had to produce photo ID and surrender their mobile phones, and were issued with detailed instructions about what to do in the event of an incident. Yet, as one concert-goer noted, prison staff were “friendlier than some of the bouncers you meet at more conventional gigs” (or even perhaps at the Oxford Union).
The event broke further new ground in that Giddens’ support act was an ensemble of six prisoners, whose names, for security reasons, were only given as Dave, Daniel, Vince, Mark, Graham and Charles.
Spanning soul ballads, gospel and beatboxing, their original material, written specifically for the concert, was full of poignant references to freedom, family, missed opportunities and hope for a better future.
Sitting in the front row, Giddens was visibly moved by the performance. “It was beautiful,” she said afterwards. “I was telling myself: don’t cry, you’ve got to get up and perform next.” As she took the stage she insisted on a further round of applause for the ensemble
Performing at Folsom prison, Cash raised the roof by singing “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”. Giddens
wisely avoided anything quite so provocative, but a tangible frisson of shared humanity ran through the audience when she sang the defiant cry of the captive: “You can take my body … but not my soul.”
With no prior experience of performing, the prison ensemble was coached over a period of several weeks by professional workshop leaders Clapham and Sherry Davis.
“We began the project as strangers, but I’ve never worked with such respect, care, compassion and a desire to achieve something great,” Clapham said. “Their songs are unflinching and honest with a rare authenticity that redefines what it is to be free. It’s been an honour to nurture their talent and I hope they go on doing it.”
The organisers hope the concert’s success has created a precedent on which they can build. “It was a unique opportunity to bring an audience into a prison for the first time,” said Sally Taylor, chief executive of Koestler Arts. “It was a chance to change the way people think about offenders and we would be disappointed if it was a oneoff.” She also praised how supportive the prison authorities had been.
“This opportunity for men at Wormwood Scrubs to collaborate through music is an important step towards making positive change,” said Sara Pennington, governor of HMP Wormwood Scrubs. “The performance required participants to step outside their comfort zone, develop new skills, selfesteem and confidence.”
The following night, Giddens – who two years ago performed with inmates at Sing Sing maximum security prison in New York – was due to play for a soldout audience on London’s South Bank. “But when the idea came up to launch our tour of Europe here in prison, I seized it,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you? It’s been an incredible and unique experience.”
Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi are at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on 22 November. Then touring until 1 December.