Buraka Som Sistema Interview

Sound of kuduro knocking at your door…

For a long time, ‘world music’ has been far from, for want of a better word, cool. But in the last few years people have been waking up to some of the incredible music being made in other continents, with the likes of M.I.A. incorporating rhythms and sounds from around the world into her music, and Brazilians Cansei de Ser Sexy and Bonde Do Role steamrolling the UK music scene last year. The latest sound sweeping the clubs is kuduro, raw dance music that originated in Angola and spread to Portugal. Buraka Som Sistema are leaders of the new wave of kuduro, combining the sound with a myriad of influences from American and European electronic music as well as hip hop. The result is incredible; pounding rhythms, scatter-gun MCing, wailing synths and an ever-present wall of quaking bass, with an insane live show that embodies the energy of the music. While Buraka Som Sistema were in town we sat them down for an interview about their album, kuduro for the uninitiated, and their dance moves – or lack of...

Watch the 'Sound of Kuduro' video on endclub.com here: www.endclub.com/node/31761

Endclub.com: The video for ‘Sound of Kuduro’ is amazing. What gave you the idea for the concept?

Buraka Som Sistema: The whole journey to where we are now with the album started with a trip to Angola. We knew the whole time we were in Angola we had to film as much stuff as possible because it might be useful for something. That’s what we ended up doing. All of the dance sequences were just filmed on a Sunday afternoon in a very nice lady’s courtyard. We just invited some of the best dancers and people involved with kuduro to come down. It was completely spontaneous. I just kept pressing repeat on the song and they just kept dancing for, like, an hour non-stop. They’ve been doing it for years, so that’s just normal for them.

Can you do any of the dance moves?

No, not at all! I’m just a lazy fat guy!

How did the hook up with M.I.A. come about?

We’d been speaking with her for a while, she wanted to go to Angola so she called us and we’ve been in touch ever since. Then we got the chance to do a track together, we recorded a hook, then we came up with the concept for the song (‘Sound of Kuduro’) based on what she’d recorded. We wanted to have a song that was like an introduction to a new musical genre for the world. Kind of like year zero for kuduro. The beat is based around a loop from a producer that almost invented the genre, DJ Znobia. The genre’s been going on for like ten years in Angola, and we just wanted to go out there and take the music as far as possible.

How prevalent is the kuduro sound in Lisbon clubs?

We made it a little bit more popular than it was. The problem was that some of the kuduro artists that were making it over to Lisbon were kind of clowning, no one really took them seriously. They did lots of prime-time commercial television shows, so it became big but it had no credibility. But we started getting really interested because we heard something good in it, so we kept buying stuff and trying to find as much music as possible. We saw that people were developing the instrumental side, and it was becoming more about dance music. Now you’ve got a lot of people listening to kuduro fusion music. What happens is you’ve got two things going on in parallel. You can go to regular clubs, and hear regular DJs playing breaks and house and all that, then you have the African clubs, where kuduro is the genre that always closes the night. The kuduro starts at four in the morning, and carries on ‘til like five or six.

What other sounds particularly influenced the Buraka Som Sistema sound?

We love everything that has a big bassline in it. We love thinking about bassline frequencies and all that stuff. We love dubstep, because it revolves around the big basslines, not necessarily stupidly huge, but music with a lot of bass power. We’ve also been into drum & bass for a long time too, we used to play it in the late 90s, I’m not totally up to date with it these days, but it’s definitely a genre that has influenced us.

There are similarities between baile funk, Baltimore and kuduro; why do you think three such geographically diverse locations would throw up music with such a similar vibe?

I don’t actually agree. I think the music is different, although the background that the music came from is similar. Maybe baile funk and Baltimore are more similar, but kuduro is different, it’s a little bit faster than everything else, it has bigger hits on the kick drum. Baile funk comes from the Brazilian favelas, kudoro comes from the ghettos of Luanda, and Baltimore comes from the suburbs of Baltimore, so I think the social background is kind of the same. I’m aware that it’s all being treated kind of like one genre, in fact it’s like six small genres being treated as one big one, and I think it’s nice. It gives you more flexibility to do whatever you want, you don’t have to be attached to a specific beat or a specific tempo - one of the things we’re doing right now is a song with Deize Trigona, the baile funk MC, for example. It’s a whole new universe for people to discover, because we (the West) have been on this hip hop and pop rock thing for ages now, and nobody really noticed that the rest of the world does music also.

Can you tell us a bit about the Buraka Som Sistema live show for the uninitiated?

Yeah, we’ve just redone the live show actually. New songs and everything. Basically we’re DJs, and we love to spin music and we have to look at the live show in the same way otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to us. We mix a bunch of songs together, then we cut every ten minutes so people can clap! We have a drummer, some percussion, keys, dancers; it’s more like a party than just a live show. We’ve had to rehearse a lot, so it’s not really a party for us, but it looks and feels like one to the audience!

Your forthcoming album ‘Black Diamond’ is ready for release. How long have you been working on it?

We’ve kind of been doing it since April 2007, but we’ve been working on it while we’ve been doing festivals and all that at the same time. It was only when we went to Angola after the summer that we recorded lots of MCs and different people, and then the serious process started in November. We had lots of beats, and about 50 ideas going on, then from November on we were like ‘let’s focus on these ten songs’ and that’s what we’ve been working on.

So how does it sound?

It’s very dancefloor. But there will be some more things in there than just dance, definitely.

If people hear your music and want to discover more kuduro, who would you recommend they check out?

Definitely DJ Znobia. He is one of the first guys that took kuduro to another level, he is wonderful. There is also a guy called Bruno M. Then there’s probably the hugest band in kuduro right now: Os Lambas. They sold like 12,000 CDs in one day in Angola, so they’re massive right now!

http://www.myspace.com/burakasomsistema
http://www.myspace.com/djznobia

Published: 11/04/2008