So fast forward, we’re about to release a great kwaito / kwassa / house album by Botswana’s Skeat, and we thought that was a fitting excuse to ask Umb to do a quick recap of the HOTTT sounds gravitating around house and Africa…
A few words from Umb:
Highlights: “Some of the African house tracks that have been constants in my sets for several years but which I have not heard many other people play and so I’d like to keep it that way..lol… The stuff that DJ Gregory is doing with Club Kuduro is really interesting me and it’s possibly the most accessible form of Kuduro for the clubs, even more accessible than what Buraka did!”
“The mix is not all strictly house, there’s elements of Barefoot in their too represented by a great new artist I’ve discovered called SiQ Nature who is a guy living in the Cook Islands, a more detailed feature on him coming to Gen Bass soon!”
“Personally, for me, I think my favoutite bit of the mix is when I blend Mokoomba messe messe by Dj Gregor Salto over a Kuduro beat! I’m not a laptop DJ and so all mixing is done on Pioneer CDJ’s and this mix is another one take/first cut cause I HATE repeating mixes and so a lil’ rough around the edges like most of my mixes!”
Good lookin’ out Mr Umb!!!!! Mix had some mastering fine-tuning courtesy of Mr Peter Pozorek, one of Umb’s usual partners in crime…!
My name is Catherine Barnes, and I’ll be contributing a series of articles to this blog on Angolan semba and Brazilian samba. I’m a percussionist and armchair ethnomusicologist fascinated by all rhythms African and of the African diaspora. I recently returned from studying samba in Rio de Janeiro, which is also where I encountered Angolan semba music for the first time. I became interested in the similarities and differences in the two styles, and what better place to explore them than here at Akwaaba Music?
Angolan semba and Brazilian samba share a common ancestor: the massemba dance from central Angola. Known as umbigada, or “belly-bumping” in Portuguese, the dance is characterized by a hip thrust meant to mimic the act of procreation. (source)
Here’s a Brazilian umbigada group performing at the First Forum in Defense of Popular Traditions in Piracicaba, Brazil:
Now check out this recent video of couples dancing semba in Luanda, Angola. Notice the “belly-bumping” movements at 1:40.
Although samba is usually danced without a partner, samba da gafieira, or ballroom samba, has become very popular, especially in Rio de Janeiro. Seu Jorge even featured it in the video for his hit song “Carolina” :
Keep checking back for more information on the similarities and differences between Angolan semba and Brazilian samba!
Not sure why you would CHOOSE to make a youtube video non-embeddable… hopefully this won’t scare you away, and you’ll make the daring decision to click here and watch the video – you won’t regret it!
We’re excited to release Skeat’s debut album later this month!! Expect a crazy mish mash of kwaito, kwassa house, hip hop and even some gospel, all meticulously produced by Ruff Riddims’s Moemdi Ramogapi. More soon on these pages…
When Akwaaba boy Benjamin Lebrave did the photo session with NY photographer Mark Squires, he was told that everybody wants to be in the Last Magazine, but that the mag’s picky editorial team turned down anything if they’d heard of it already: so no J-Lo or Lady Gaga in their pages, they are last as in first, and Mark automatically gave Benjamin major props just for having been chosen by the mag. Besides flattery and making his subject comfortable, we like to think that we are indeed the shiznit for landing this piece, which is well written by casting wizard and apparently quite talented occaasional writer Natalie Joos. Also check out this awesome video of someone flipping through the magazine’s pages. You can download a pdf of the article here, or find the entire mag at Colette in Paris – where else!
