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NEW RELEASE ON VINYL

Orgullo De Barrio by GEKAH

Alberto Gekah’s “Orgullo de barrio” – hip hop from Canary Islands. The result of a collaborative project after an original idea of PSJM with Asiria Álvarez and the participation of the people of the neighbourhood of Las Rehoyas in Las Palmas de Gran Canarias.

Canary Islands is a place in conflict of identities. Geographically located in Africa it has a history of conquest, colonization and Spanish rule that goes back to the fifteenth century. This history has been erased by the colonial authorities or internalized as somehow inevitable to the point that not much is known today about the original people inhabiting the islands, presumably related to the Berbers. At the time of the Spanish Empire the islands were used as stop-over for the galleons on their way to rampage the Americas, their people, and resources. The Canaries have today a Spanish and European identity, although is too far to be Europe or Spain. The different islands are now confronted with their own past as they serve as a gateway to Europe for thousands of poor and desperate Africans, many of whom have found their grave in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. Several mining projects, mainly offshore, threaten the ecological sustainability of the islands. The fact is that, if not geographically, then politically and economically the Canary Islands have been separated from Africa. The umbilical cord has been artificially cut and restoring it is going to take more than words and wishful thinking. The Canary Islands have become an anomaly or, as European politicians say: an outermost region of the EU, together with Azores or Guadeloupe. A great euphemism to disguise the real historical process of colonization and accumulation.

Orgullo De Barrio by GEKAH on vinyl by Tropical Diaspora® Records
Gekah - Orgullo de barrio (con Asiria Álvarez y PSJM)

Academy of World Arts presents

Podcast Series | ADKDW [•rec]

with DANIELLE ALMEIDA, CHIMURENGA (NTONE EDJABE), OLIVIER MARBOEUF, TROPICAL DIASPORA (DJ GARRINCHA, DJ DR. SÓCRATES)
curated und moderated by MAX JORGE HINDERER CRUZ

Learning to Listen is a podcast format that explores different forms of listening – both listening and not listening – and the knowledge that can be drawn from them. The focus is on learning and unlearning to listen and engaging with internalized mindsets. The main aim of Learning to Listen is to initiate didactic processes intended to help us understand why certain sounds, songs, and narratives are heard and others are not, and to interweave auditory events with anti/decolonial education. The individual episodes are conceived as heterogeneous audio essays; the invited guests have free rein over their concept and realization. The format will be launched in October 2021 with four essays dealing with Afrodiasporic soundscapes, song forms, and music production, as well as their histories and communities. The episodes include recorded live performances (Danielle Almeida), vinyl productions (Tropical Diaspora / DJ GArRinchA and DJ Dr. Sócrates), and collages that bring together sound and performative approaches (Chimurenga / Ntone Edjabe and Olivier Marboeuf). What unites the various guests is that they understand sound and music as a kind of epistemic tool, as an instrument for the production of knowledge and community. The aim is to combine the experience of listening with the guests’ pedagogical strategies, commentary, and thoughts on Afrodiasporic and Latin American music and soundscapes.

Learning to Listen #4

DJ and producer GArRinchA (São Paulo, but Berlin-based since the 1990s) and cultural researcher DJ Dr. Sócrates founded the event platform and record label Tropical Diaspora in 2008. Tropical Diaspora Records produces vinyl records and views production as a means of empowerment, as a way of supporting artists and raising awareness of past and present stories of the African and neocultural diaspora – imposed by enslavement, economic causes, and the flight from war and poverty. DJ GArRinchA and DJ Dr. Sócrates will present some of the label’s productions and talk about the founding of the label, which itself is in a state of diaspora.

Link to the Episodes

About Us!

Our language is music. We feel obliged to empower the people we work with by means of giving them the chance to control their own narrative. We emphasize cross-cultural experiences that show the manner how communities take their past and present into their own hands. And we are glad to be an instrument for this purpose.

We are an independent record label, and event, Tropical Diaspora®️ Records has as its main focus the production of vinyl records of the Afro Diaspora and Native cultures.