Deriving from the French term, ‘secousse’ literally meaning ‘to shake’, Soukous music has a simple aim, to make the people dance. Originating in Congo, Soukous spread its rhythms throughout Africa, eventually capturing the hearts and dancefloors of London and Paris in the 80’s, with Paris based musicians such as the...
Playlists
Articles
This ticket is for a trip back in time, to the roots of one of the most popular upbeat music styles: ska. The origins of the genre date back to the late 1950s, when Jamaican music producers like Prince Buster, Clement “Sir Coxsone” Dodd and Duke Reid formed the first...
“Patchanka is the wild sound, for proud souls and lonely hounds”, this was the refrain of the patchanka’s style manifesto song written by Manu Chao and Mano Negra back 1989. Willy-nilly, the French (with Basque origin) musician and band are the most significant exponents of the sound born at the...
The Balkans has always been the most unstable European region. Its boundaries are still today volatile and migrations, wars and disputes have regularly scarred the peninsula. This also means that Balkan culture and music have constantly been influenced by foreign elements, adopting and blending them together with the proudly home-grown...
To compile a playlist about calypso music is also to delve into Trinidad and Tobago’s history. When the first kaisonians or storytellers/griots were deported from West Africa (in particular Nigeria) in the late 17th century, they started to spread a new music repertoire on the islands referring to their Ibibio...
Boogaloo (or, more aptly bugalú) is the sound of Puerto Rican and Cuban migration in the U.S. It characterised and described the impact and feelings of Caribbean migrants in New York from the late 1950s till early ‘70s. For this reason, more than a musical mix between the traditional caribeño...
They said that cumbia is a woman who has rhythmic hips… for sure cumbia fulfil itself in the sinuous moves of its dance. In fact, no matter how much you try to just listen to cumbia, you’ll inevitably end up dancing. Cumbia is the result of two centuries of African...