Call it tropical, outernational, metropolitan bass or transnational ghettotech – CTM.09's Opening Club Night will embark on a border-smashing trip to the new hybrids of metropolitan street music from around the globe.
The term "Funk Mundial" was coined by Daniel Haaksman. A record-series of the same name on his Man Recordings label dates from 2006, a series that focused on expanding the funk carioca, favela funk and Baile funk of Brasil towards a global aesthetic. The program tonight references Haaksman's remapping/extrapolation, so brilliantly developed on Man Recordings, though features no artists from the label itself.
This night pools the brightest producers of global urban music working in the collision of regional styles, local sound recordings, rhythms and bass heavy beats to create genre-defying dance tracks. Far from walking worn out paths, these artists mix sounds from the world's notorious city-centre hubs with urban musics of the southern hemisphere: Sweat.X and Mujava from South Africa, Maga Bo and MC BNegão from Rio, Ghislain Poirier from Montréal, Radioclit from London and globetrotter Filastine get urban beats from all corners of the planet cracklin’ and clashin’. Held together by the mysterious force of subsonic bass, a new post-geographic street music is emerging from the gaps between breakbeat, hiphop, kwaito, cumbia, baile funk, kuduro, coupé decalé, middle eastern song, dancehall, and other styles, and is leaving no dance floor cold.
Helped by accessible travel, the connecting qualities of the internet, the easy disposability of electronic equipment, and through ongoing trans-national exchange and collaborations, an international network of musicians has developed, that is working on new musical musical hybrids – pioneered by DJ/Rupture with his Soot imprint, and spread by artists like Diplo, Bonde do Rolê, Buraka Som Sistema, Switch, Sinden and his Counterfeet label, and widely popularized by the mainstream success of M.I.A. and Santogold. In contrast to so called "world music", these artist avoid folkloristic nostalgia and instead reflect the current reality of urban (pop) cultures. The attitude here is less fusion and harmony, and instead more confrontation, clash, nervous alertness, roughness and raving block-party. This is most evident in the collaborations of Maga Bo, Filastine and Radioclit with MCs like BNegão or Teba from Rio, Malawi born singer Esau Mwamwaya, Xuman from Dakar or K-Libre from Morocco: their raps are reports of daily life in their hometowns.
A new internationale of urban street music has formed, that is defined not only by regional context but taps into a universal repertoire of sounds and style elements that are understood in clubs around the world.
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