ON : Buraka Som Sistema

Buraka Som Sistema are all over the latest Hollertronix EP and their debut album, Black Diamond, will be released soon by Fabric. This makes perfect sense. If anyone should have their album put out by a nightclub it’s these hard-partying dudes. We caught up with Lil’ John from the band recently. After the jump he gives us the skinny on kuduro, the BSS sound and the origins of Black Diamond.

Diplo & Buraka Som Sistema – Inna De Ghetto (Remix) [mp3]

ON Kuduro:

“A lot of people don’t realise that there are these huge cities in African countries. Everyone thinks it’s all lions and safaris, but it’s not. Kuduro comes from these cities. It doesn’t come from traditional music, it exists as a reaction to it. It’s anti-world music. At the beginning of the 90s it wasn’t anything more than an Angolan guy trying to make techno or house. But because he doesn’t think like a German guy or an American guy, because his mind thinks in a different way in terms of rhythm, he developed this amazing new take on old sounds.

“We’re from Lisbon and we grew up on bass music: jungle, drum and bass, hip-hop and dubstep. We love it all. So 50% of our music is that stuff, as much as it is kuduro. We heard kuduro around our neighbourhood, in the Angolan community. We took the rhythmic construction and added our own ideas.”

ON Black Diamond:

“Black Diamond is the name of our album and a lot more besides. We developed all this stuff while we were in Angola. It’s terrible the way the money from diamonds leaves that country. The money should be used to develop cities and the whole structure of the country, but instead millions and millions of dollars pour out, and the diamonds end up in bracelets that people wear on stage. Our diamond is different. It’s black and it’s rough, fresh from the mine. It represents the whole process, from the ground up. Our music is like that. I went to Cape Town a few months ago and found out that a black diamond was a second generation black guy from humble beginnings who’s made it in life. A self made man. That’s us too.”

01.09.08.