I caught Boo Lean at a party at Elsewhere a year or so ago. It was my first experience with kuduro … it was unexpected and super refreshing.
The next weekend there was a block party around the corner from my apt, and for the duration, the sound was kuduro. At this point I still didn’t know what it was. I’ve known there have been thriving dance music scenes running in parts of Africa for a while now, but these were my first glimpses of their influence.
I only dipped down and sampled the block party in short spurts throughout the afternoon. Coming back to my place after one visit, I reached out to a friend, Tyler Pope, who clued me in to the sound. Turns out Tyler’s upcoming EP, Pay Attention To The Bass, had kuduro influences in it.
As an aside, I wanted to find an image to support this post, but a couple searches didn’t produce much. I thought, “I can just quickly make one w Midjourney.” And sure, I was able to create some decent looking pics, but in the end, I’ve never been to a party in Angola, or anywhere else in Africa for that matter. It seemed like I was producing something out of English as she is spoke … something created via a game of telephone. The representation of African culture is unfortunately lacking online. There’s some thinking (and work!) to be done on that one.
My gift to you: Tyler’s Pay Attention To The Bass and Boo Lean’s opening set at Nowadays ~ Nov 2023.
And then I realized I need an image to use as the featured image on the homepage. This has pretty much no relation this post:
