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June 2008Barcelona, SpainSonar looks to Africa for inspiration
Western electronic music is in risk of dying a slow, desperate death, buried in its own culture. Thescene is looking for some inspiration. The sounds of the synthesiser, as diverse and significant asthey are, seem to be limited and new technologies, mainly home-made, continually need to beadded. Listeners and revellers today need something more than the samples of past TV showsand video games. We need new sounds. But what do you do when those new ideas and newtechnologies are all coming from the same place? What do you do when those ideas are allculturally infused with the same history and the ideas end up not being all that diverse? You lookto Africa and the developing world.Organisers of Sonar, an annual festival of digital media and electronic music held in Barcelonalast week recognises this desire and for the first time in their 15 year history invited African artistsdirectly – to hold the stage on their own in a kind of tip of the hat to their growing influence in thesounds now permeating our dance floors and MP3 players.As a festival constantly looking for the new, the fresh and the happening, it seems Africa is thechosen origin for the inspiration that electronic music is looking for. Javier Blánquez, journalistand music critic, and one of the organisers of Sonar believes there are significant reasons for African sounds finding their way onto European dance floors. Cultural roots and untapped cultureare slamming into new technologies. As music producers in developing countries wash upagainst the shores of technological innovation from their apparent drifting in underdevelopment,we are being introduced to a wealth of sounds, ideas and new ways to boogie. “As the technologyfor these musicians becomes cheaper and easier to access, it is enabling them to create thingsthey could never have done before”, says Blánquez. And not only that, other parallel technologiesthey have growing access to, such as the internet, introduces them to an audience they wouldnever have had otherwise. “It is the technology that makes this music possible in so many ways”.Konono No.1, an outfit from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, formed by MawanguMingiedi, have been making music for over 25 years through the use of a sanza or thumb piano,and various other instruments, mainly salvaged from old car parts and junk yards plugged into anamplifier. But only now, as the group has sufficient access to technology and exposure can theycatch up to their European peers to be recognised and heard. It was only in 2005 when they
 
released their album
Congotronics
and since then they have influenced and played with artistssuch as Bjork.Developing nations are emerging in many such areas and the European market is finding newsounds and in turn spurning on new musical ideas. When asked where his influences come from,Mingiedi replies, “I didn't know there was such a thing as electronic music. I don't borrow fromanyone”. And that is exactly the kind of untainted, raw sound the electronic music enthusiasts arelooking for.Take Ricardo Villalobos, a techno producer that was born in Chile but made huge success withexperiments in rhythm with congas and bongos along with thumping techno beats in the hugedance scene in Berlin. “It is unlikely that a guy born and raised solely in Berlin would have madethat connection between two sounds coming from such different places”, says Heiko Hoffmann,editor of Berlin based, Groove magazine. But techno, a genre declared dead a number of timesby music critics has borrowed heavily from such influences and is making a strong comeback. Toproduce a sound like that, you need diverse roots. And the electronic music industry is findingthat producers with more eclectic roots are coming to dominate the scene as they make some of the most interesting music – made in such an unexpected way.Sonar also invited Angola outfit, Buraka Som Sistema. They began making music together in their teens. The members draw influences from the music of their youth and culture and fuse that withinspiration taken from genres as diverse as techno, drum and bass, hip hop and stomping dancemusic. Mix all that up with kudoro, Angolan dance music, and you have some fresh new ideasthat couldn’t possibly come from Europe. Their success – the group nabbed the single of the year from Fact magazine and were finalists in MTV’s New Sound of Europe competition – has addedto the idea that the epicentre of music is shifting out of major Western cities such as London or New York and producers are sitting up to take notice. Africa is coming out guns blazing and theyaren’t waiting for any major label or recognition to do it.Mary Anne Hobbs, experimental music radio DJ for BBC Radio 1, who introduced dubstep – asound that has inherited a structure similar to that used in drum and bass and UK garage - saidthat the need to conform to record label expectations has largely been squashed. Community isall you need these days – support of a network. “MySpace (a social networking site used by manymusic producers to make their music easily accessible to a large audience) has reduced thedegree of separation to zero”. And that kind of networking ability allows for all kinds of spontaneous things to happen.
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