It’s not that things used to be simpler back then. It is purely and simply that things used to be more amiss. And, if they weren’t, they were perceived as more amiss due to our vision of the world which was much narrower, biased and wrong. A few decades ago, ‘heritage music’ was only used to refer to North American heritage, primitive folk. Redneck country nd the rock that came from the Southern swamps. A few decades ago as well, ‘heritage music’ was something that was totally circumscribed in the African continent, as if this kind of music was only made there, as if this kind of music were made there (which isn’t the same thing), and as if they were stuck in the past with an atavistic artistic vision.
FIVE ARTISTS THAT BROADEN THE HORIZON OF HERITAGE MUSIC
Heritage music is not what it used to be before, in fact, it’s better than ever. A few artists around the world are proving that there’s not just one type of ethnic music, but there are many ethnic types of music that are ready to be mixed with current production methods to reprogram the sounds of the future. We’re taking advantage of the fact that this evening we’re presenting in our Barcelona store the latest Napapijri collection along with the Voodoo Club collective, driven by Wekaforé Jibril, one of the members of Egosex, to talk about these five musical proposals you shouldn’t lose sight of.
Both discourses, like many others, have been exhausted with the arrival of the Internet. The network of networks proved that heritage music could refer to other roots because the roots that came from the swamps of Louisiana were as vibrant as the rocky mountains of the Himalaya. It also proved that heritage music also had an atavistic side, but reducing it to Africa was condemning the continent to a past which they had been liberated from a while ago: in Africa, they make more modern music than in Barcelona. And, for that reason, ethnic music is seen as an alternative to folk, at the same time that it folk isn’t only American anymore as it refers to any type of folklore that celebrates the musical past of a region.
The orography of the worldwide musical map has changed dramatically and a movement of tectonic plates at this level deserved a new terminology that could refer to the new continents that have emerged. So let’s better forget the ethnic cliché and open our mind to new possibilities. Some possibilities, for example, like the celebration of the tribal future that we have developed at Sivasdescalzo for the latest Napapijri collection along with Alicia Padrón, which will culminate with an event today at our Barcelona store. Other possibilities such exemplary as the five artists we’ll proceed to present that are devoting their lives to broadening the heritage horizon.
EGOSEX. Trance Jungle Blues. That’s how the trio Egosex defines their own music. Dance music with a powerful ancestral African soul component that emerged from the underground of… Barcelona? Well, of course. We live in a. globalised world. And the charisma that is exhumed by the leader, Wekaforé Jibril (who’ll be DJing today), can afford to sound however and wherever he wants.
KOKOKO! If Egosex is a cool approach to black heritage, Kokoko! follows a different direction. The Congolese combo also approaches African traditions to dance music, but they do so by resorting to instruments that they make from the trash they find in the streets. They are as powerful in their ability to make you dance and to make you reflect.
DEENA ABDELWAHED. This Tunisian woman has come to break down walls. For starters, she decided to stay away from jazz from her beginnings to bring traditional Arab sounds closer to the future of electronic music. And also, she’s all about queer activism in a scene in which all things queer suffer from a special type of stigmatisation. The world is changing thanks to people like Deena.
DENGUE DENGUE DENGUE! Felipe Salmón and Rafael Pereira are DJs but they also produce their own music and they even work in graphic design. Now, what’s interesting about the duet under the name of Dengue Dengue Dengue! is precisely that the prove that ethnic music can also be groundbreaking and that it doesn’t have to limit itself to one single territory. Why shouldn’t Latin music be mixed with African music to change traditional electronic music?
NICOLA CRUZ. Nicola Cruz’s latest album so far is titled Siku, which is non-other than a typically Andean flute. What he does, however, is and has always been percussion. That might be why he has built a name for himself in the worldwide music scene as an artist that can make electronic music (almost) without electronica, but through an Andean tradition of fascinating sounds that are driven by an organic vision of percussion.
