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Following The Buraka Som Sistema Search For World Music

BSS are like musical and cultural evangelists trying to find out about every scene on the planet.

Buraka Som Sistema are musical and cultural evangelists. For almost ten years now, the kuduro-techno-grime specialists have been touring the planet and sharing their encyclopaedic knowledge of little known genres with their audiences.

Lisbon isn’t that big a place when analysing through a musical context. Electronic music especially consists of a tight knit network of beatmakers who all know each other. Buraka Som Sistema take their name from Buraca, a Lisbon suburb in the municipality of Amadora where things first started for João Barbosa (Branko). “Me and Rui (DJ Riot) grew up in the same place. We went to the same school and everything. From an early point we got really tired of being in bands that didn’t work out. There was always, like, a drummer missing or something else missing so we tried to make our own music using computers. We started doing that through school and producing for rappers and other people.” Those first steps into using software would eventually lead on to DJing where the pair would do their own residencies at clubs and soon enough there was a night for them to curate. And thus, Buraka emerged.

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From just a handful of partygoers, numbers swelled to over 500 people for a 100 max club. “It got to a point where we made this night – and Kalaf was already our friend at this point – making beats mixed in with all these kuduro songs which we were able to flip and play on the same night. Then Conductor – who was in a different group at the time – got invited to try and do something with us because we knew that he had a link with Angola.” Kuduro was a big thing in the mid-90s in Portugal. Artists such as Helder and self-proclaimed father of kuduro, Tony Amado, popularised its existence taking the sound onto television. Like many a genre, it soon deteriorated into uncreative, mainstream-tinged radio tick offs but Buraka found creativity amongst the rubble. It became their punk. Toying with the roots of the genre, they unravelled something new. João's eyes open up when questioned about his discovery of the BSS sound. “We came across a huge amount of amazing beats that could be like Aphex Twin on Warp Records. The way that they organised the beats was weird because there was no sequencing and just a bunch of weird noises that made really cool music.”

The music had power. The power to make people get naked and wrangle their bodies in newfound ways, devoid of a systematic dance to follow or rules to abide by. Then, just as it was developing its own persona, it all got shut down because it was totally illegal. The sound was left growing with no stomping ground to let the sound run riot. Undeterred the crew’s vision marched on. “It felt like it really connected to the people that lived there and it also brought everyone’s background into the DJ booth. So we made it from a night into a band and things quickly escalated from there.” Naturally, gauging their performances from crowd reaction was difficult at first. Just as offering to guide an audience through uncharted musical territory is bound to be. Appreciation slowly began to grow. “The first time we went to the States, there were a lot of people. I remember in San Francisco when some girl just came onto the stage and took her top off, dancing with her boobs out. There was a fun night in London – this was super early [in our careers] – but they could only afford two plane tickets so only the DJs could come, me and Rui. Nobody knew the songs we were playing but the promoters were super smart about it.”

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Like Buraka, Diplo has also become a kind of prophet of genre amalgamation. So just before Buraka dropped their first proper album, Black Diamond, it seemed apt that the two combined their talent on the “Inna De Ghetto (Remix)”. Having the kudos from one of the world’s most well known culture hoarder in Diplo opened doors as Buraka's first album welcomed features from M.I.A and Kano. Last year also saw them collaborate with Santigold; “We made one song with Santigold and she got involved because she sees that I want to grab part of my past and put it on record. That’s how people relate to us,” João comments.

But according to João, there is still a lack of true culture being spread in music today. Yes, the sheened electronica of “Get Lucky” is inescapable and yes, “they’re amazing” but Buraka are more concerned with the intricate pockets of culture left uncovered and teeming with ingenuity. “I'm just fucking tired of this democratical thing of everyone being on the internet and listening to the same fucking music on the same fucking websites. I would die a happy person if I were able to grab some of those people and take them to a different place.”

Armed with this mission, they’re now marching into their next album. Once more, their aim is to spread the message of world music to as many as possible. As well as mining for untouched musical communities in the process. “For me, it’s just a massive encyclopaedia in my brain. It’s not like, grime isn’t cool any more or was cool. It’s all about grime happened, I knew about it and I locked the information in my head. At the end of the day, if some alien came down to Earth, would you lose that much time in trying to differentiate South African house and kuduro? Probably not.”

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Red Bull Music Academy presents 'Off The Beaten Track', a documentary following Buraka Som Sistema on their global travels. Buraka are currently touring around Europe with the screening of the documentary. You can check here.

Follow Errol on Twitter @errol_and

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