Eight years of toil pays off
EP OUT: AFTER A MEETING IN BERLIN AND LATER PARIS
I rap in English and Sepedi – calling for change.
It was eight years ago in Berlin that I met Philippe Cohen Solal, the maestro of Gotan Project. We were both booked to perform at a club called Gretchen. I loved what he did with tango, introducing it to a new audience. There was a time when I lived in London where all the cool gastro pubs would be playing Gotan Project, Buddha-Bar, Hotel Costes, Cafe del Mar. He was that dude. After the show we spoke of rumba vs rhumba, champeta and how tango was born from African slaves in Argentina. Then, later, it’s all the rage of “high society” in Europe.
We met again in Paris, spoke of breaking genres, collaborations. At the time the texture of his sound in his DJ sets was more Latin Electronica but you could hear the curiosity and his vast music programmer knowledge. We wanted to make a track that breaks borders, connects Africa to South America and Europe. I came to him with a drum pattern I programmed, with an Afro-House vibe, we sampled Obama’s speech, Frelimo, and played about for hours and hours in the studio. Philippe then had the key ingredient: sampled Ravel. But rather than use the actual sample, and this is what Philippe is a genius at, he created his own version. Remember that Phillippe discovered Keziah Jones, Zazie and produced Salif Keïta, among others. Then he invited a sacred cocktail: Flamme Kapaya, the outstanding Congolese guitarist, our homie the Parisian DJ-beatmaker
Lazy Flow and the late Hilaire Penda, Cameroonian bassist.
The track took another life, more live, and then, the cherry on top. The queen, who sings for world presidents, UN ambassador Angélique Kidjo, added her incredible vocal tones.
Initially I was hesitant about rapping or doing a rap with Afro Bolero because I was striving to be taken more seriously as a producer.
I thought the track could live as it was with minimum vocals but I wanted it to be performative, so improvised rap did come back into the mix after all. I wanted to invent a new dance style, way before the Tik Tok app existed.
I was inspired by how in South Africa every year there is a new dance style, and the dance movements go on to inspire the world, such as the DJ bongs, the Pantsula dancers in Beyonce’s video.
I wanted to create this new pan-African dance move. I wanted to connect the black Atlantic, the diaspora, I called upon the spirit of my ancestors, my heroes, freedom fighters Patrice Lumumba, Steve Biko. There is a scene in Cry Freedom when you see Biko dance, I love that. It reminds me that even when there is a revolution on, we should still remember to dance.
I rap in English and in Sepedi (Northern Sotho), one of the 11 official languages in South Africa, calling for change.
We should dance to remember our histories, dance to let go, dance to connect, dance to break class, racial, sexual barriers.
I believe in Globalisto, the spirit of a borderless world, the spirit of ubuntu. I believe we have captured that in this track.
The EP is out now with fresh cutting-edge remixes by Damon Albarn’s protege Pote, German electronica maestro Daniel Haaksman, avant-guard Spoek Mathambo’s group Batuk.
I wanted to invent a new dance way before Tik Tok