Practice your Swedish… and help us figure out what the article says! Anna and Sebastian of Stockholm’s High Life party introduced us to Nanushka Yeaman, a – very friendly – Swedish-American journalist who does culture columns for Dagens Nyheter, the largest Swedish daily. Today, this culture is dedicated to Akwaaba and our mission to spread music and cultures from Africa. Dig it!
This just in: thanks to our Swedish fans for the translation in the comments below.
Benjamin Lebrave has just signed a contract with reggae artist Rab Bobo (left). The artists are seldom the central recording contracts.
Benjamin Lebrave dumped career statistics for a more enjoyable future as a label boss. With Fairtrade label Akwaaba he spends on African-produced club music -on the artists terms.
When DN hits the French-American Afrikafrälste Benjamin Lebrave he is in Stockholm to play at Club High Life on the Beach. A typical day at work for a man who devotes much of its time to bomb western dance floor with young African clu-bastards as hiplife and kuduro. When he drivers around Africa as determined talent scout for his own label Akwaaba.
It only takes ten seconds for me to know if I should sign someone or not. Sometimes I like just one song. But I see what I invest in a scene rather than the individual artists. When I was in Ghana, I wrote, for example, contracts with 25 artists, he explains, and takes a bite at an Ethiopian pancake, while I try to disconnect all the shoulder-shaking singer dancing on the south restaurant Abyssinia big screen.
Benjamin Lebrave called Akwaaba for a fair trade label, as he and the artists share 50-50 in any net revenue. While the bulk of his work is to get the music, which is not always the easiest. Although various indie bands and bloggers took it into his heart, he believes that the Western world, especially the United States lags behind in the knowledge of African dance music.
He sours also that the Portuguese kudurotranslater Buraka Som Sistema gets more attention than the originals from Angola. While he admits that the ghetto-tech artists Buraka, MIA and Diplo has opened many doors, even for him. But there is still many locks that needs to process.
- The scene of African music is basically divided between world music people who are interested in folklore, and the diaspora who want to dance to new music from home and club kids with house and electro as the input. What I am trying to do is get them to start talking with each other and do things together, he says.
But the most important thing is that the music he gives out is produced in Africa by Africans. – I am not against mixing western and African, but so far it´s almost always done by Western producers Chris Blackwell, Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel. Even Amadou & Mariam are produced by Manu Chao. I´m not saying it is bad or uninteresting, but we need balance.
With Akwaaba, he wants to highlight African music that are not identified in the West, and therefore do not originate from Mali or someone with the surname Kuti. – Oumou Sangare and Salif Keita tour almost every year for 20 years and they are fantastic, but it becomes tedious to always see the same faces. And you don´t want to go to the african clubs that has been playing Fela Kuti-track for ten years. – That leaves the Diaspora as a shortcut to new music, but their celebrations are so difficult to find, in all cases in Los Angeles, where I live. You have to drive for hours to a Nigerian restaurant in order to perhaps find a flyer and then you get to know that the club changed venues and you get the number of the owner´s cousin, who knows where it is now.
he give a tired smile.
Instead Lebrave gone to the source, and identify music gold in a dozen African countries. Cameroon is highest on the wish list next. But mostly, he hopes that people become more aware of different African music styles, even if they do not like them. For more on the way. – The new technology has changed everything. There is an ongoing social and economic tsunami in terms of mobile and communication that will change Africa into the ground.