And another one! We connect this time with Barcelona / worldwide crew Folcore, who’ve been running the Club du Monde nights. On September 26, Akwaaba’s own bbrave join the festivities, alongside Lisbon’s Diamond Bass, who sounds a little like this:
Also on the bill, our doods hat+hoodie, hailing from Fulda / Würzburg, Germany – did you grab their Akwaabarama mixtape?
We are pretty stoked to make this one happen… we’ve been in touch with the Crowdkrusher guys in Tübingen, Germany for a few months only, and out of this new connection comes a link to the city’s lively tropical scene, starting with a great party to be held at club Mancuso with the lively trio, pictured here hard at work:
Crowdkrushers drop anything from electro and fidget to dancehall and cumbia. Here’s one of their mixes, tropical, uk funky and the like… pungent blend!!! Dig in:
It’s that time of year… we’re headed back to ye olde world to rock a bunch of tropical partaaaaays. Starting in Berlin during Berlin Music Week, which we will also attend – more on that in a bit. We are reconnecting with some key players in Germany and Berlin’s tropical scene:
Dala Dala is giving you a 21st century Afro bass reality check. Songs on heavy rotation from the township minibuses in Soweto to the dala dala minibuses in Dar es Salaam, select tunes from the danfo drivers of Lagos biggest ghetto Ajegunle or the car rapides of Dakar: street music from the hot urban music scenes of Africa. It just had to be a matter of time that an international audience got infected with the virus of the latest African club trends. Dala Dala gives an overview over the wealth and variety of urban sounds from the african continent. Marflix (Tropical Bass, Faluma)
Berlin-based DJ/producer Marflix searching for the perfect beat since the early 90s. Focused on Caribbean music flavored with Bass and Club. Current selection varies from Soca & Caribbean to African club music like Kuduro, Coupé Décalé, Funana to European club music. Marflix also runs his own label Faluma which is specialized on Soca & Caribbean music. Musical background in Punk and HipHop.
DJ Zhao brings contemporary and classic dance music together from all five continents, with focus on Africa. While his DJ sets reach from culture centers to remote areas of the globe, and from today back through the ages, DJ Zhao’s remix and mashup work directly connects “East” and “West”, acoustic and electronic, traditional and hyper-modern. Equal parts ethno-musicologist and booty shaker, Zhao is a transnational ambassador of boom not only talking about, but demonstrating through unforgettable raw sound experience, the underlying unity of all earth rhythms.
Another fine mashup of some of our recent titles… this time coming from our good friends Anna and Sebastian of Highlife Stockholm! Scroll down for full tracklist.
What’s the story behind High Life?
High Life is Stockholm’s most tropical club night and dj-team. Since two years we bring together everything from good time party music such as Highlife, Soukous or Champeta to dancefloor smashers from all continents: Kwaito house, Coupé Decalé, Kuduro and Digital Cumbia to just name a few.
The Highlife of the 60’s was one of the first – or maybe even THE first – hybrid music style that integrated both western and traditional elements. You can say that it represents a somewhat prototype for the music we play, therefore the name.
How did you first get into tropical beats?
We have both been djing for a long time and are always looking for fresh and exiting stuff. At one point we came across a mixtape with picked highlife-guitars and repetitive soukous-rhythms that made us curious. To find out that these styles even had made their way into today’s samplers and drum machines and were combined with Techno and
House got us even more exited.
Why don’t you tell everyone how you hooked up with us at Akwaaba?
We hooked up with Akwaaba almost a year ago when we had the honor to host DJ BBRAVE for an eclectic dj-set full of African pop pearls. Tunes from Akwaaba acts as Kedjevara, Killamu or Skeat are floorfillers at High Life nights since then and make the swedish palms shake.
What are your personal favorites / highlights in the mix?
We put together a couple of our Akwaaba favourites (for more favs check our other mixes and some tunes that are hot at High Life right now. It’s hard to point out particular songs but we really dig the cora-tunes of Jali Bakary Konteh and Issa Bagayogo as well as Skeats botswana house. In Europe, Debruit impresses us most at the moment with his wonky take on Highlife.