An Overview of Hidden Sounds and Rhythms
Music genres, like society, are increasingly liquid and mixed with each other. As Western music becomes hyper-conceptual and algorithmic, new trends emerge in Latin America, Africa and Asia.
It is very difficult, sometimes impossible, to recognize new musical genres. For some time, artists have been mixing different styles, redefining the boundaries – even geographical ones – of pop, rock, folk, electronic and rap, until they are demolished. At the dawn of 2020, technology made music production tools accessible to anyone and everywhere, even in the bedroom, with a simple internet connection.
The music of today, and even more so that of tomorrow, is the result of post-global creativity. To observe its evolution, the gaze must turn from the scene of New York, London and Berlin to that of Lima, Lagos or Yogyakarta. The explosion of streaming, even in videos to engage fans live through platforms such as TikTok, Twitch and YouTube, has made submerged artists and music from all over the world popular, those erroneously tagged in the “world” category that, finally, live on life of its own.
Sounds of secular traditions now allow themselves to be contaminated, become hybrids and design contemporary rhythms. Engaging songs are born from the latest generations of musicians, producers, labels and artistic collectives among which international ties and collaborations are created. Latin America, Africa and Asia are the largest areas to draw from: their diaspora continues to produce talent. But what is happening to so-called Western music, especially in Europe ?
Conceptronica, the Music to Dance Is Listened to in the Museum
If, after half a century of pop and rock, the genre that has dominated the last twenty years of popular music is hip hop, with its derivations (urban, dubstep, trap), the advent of the Internet has also radically transformed the production and use of club music. To describe the most current and in vogue electronic music, music critic Simon Reynolds coined the term conceptronica.
Not a genre in itself, but rather the way in which various producers experiment with music as a function of the reception of an audience engaged in the most widespread multidisciplinary spaces: no longer in clubs and discos, but in museums, art galleries and at festivals. And we are not just talking about hyper-digital music, but also about design for video games, three-dimensional animations, concepts of politics, philosophy and current affairs on more or less dystopian scenarios. A return to total art, or at least an attempt, to face a future that is already present.
Some of these musicians, such as the English Lee Gamble, the Finns Amnesia Scanner and Lorenzo Senni, deconstruct sounds to reconstruct rave settings, others ride technologies related to artificial intelligence ( Holly Herndon ), many expose themselves on gender issues ( Elysia Crampton, Arca, Lotic, Yves Tumor, Juliana Huxtable and Sophie ).
The New Latin Wave, From Spiritual Reggaeton to Andes Step
Latin music is a constantly evolving genre, colored by traditions, migrations and innovations. Having survived military dictatorships, wars, famines and natural disasters, it continues to resist despite the fashions of the moment. But this is precisely the moment of reggaeton, which is not just the rhythm of a viral hit like Despacito, on the contrary it can take on unthinkable, even spiritual, semblances. That of the Dominican Kelman Duran, for example, is a music to dance to, as festive as an explosion of Afro-Caribbean sounds can be, yet inhabited by generational restlessness, desert spaces, samples and spectral languages.
About fifteen years ago cumbia, born in Colombia and spread throughout Latin America, was “contaminated” for the first time with electronics during the Zizek parties in Buenos Aires by Pedro Canale, a producer who also made the noise of the Bolivian forest and the birds of Belize. These parties, later merged into a music label, gave rise to the digital cumbia of artists such as La Yegros, Mitú and Nicola Cruz.
The latter, born in France of Ecuadorian parents and moved with them to Quito, in the heart of the Andes, immerses his compositions with modern basses in the landscapes, in the culture of the past and in the rituals of indigenous peoples. Nicola Cruz is now a global phenomenon, standard-bearer of the new Latin wave and of what has been renamed as andes step.
The ‘ electro cumbia is the genre most danced in Lima, thanks to artists such as Dengue Dengue Dengue, who perform wearing fluorescent masks recall the Peruvian folklore. The duo formed by Felipe Salmon and Rafael Pereira creates digitalized tropical sound storms, between futuristic sound and captivating visuals.
From Afrobeat to Afrobeats, New Generations Are Growing up
The 20-year-olds of the Lagos ghetto in Nigeria grew up listening to the Afrobeat of the legendary Fela Kuti, but also to American hip hop and Jamaican dancehall. From the union of these musical styles, a mix of hybrid languages and propulsive rhythms of West Africa was born, influenced by funk, jazz, electronic and r’n’b. The sung, in English, French or local dialects such as Yoruba and Pidgin, became more melodic, the songs became shorter, autotune arrived. This is how afrobeats presents itself: more than a genre, a culture, a movement.
A music, considered clandestine only fifteen years ago, which took off together with the Nigerian film industry of Nollywood. Afrobeats pieces now fill spaces in Africa, Europe and the United States, from advertisements to telephone ringtones. In addition to Tiwa Savage, WizKid, Burna Boy, Tekno, Bankulli, Mr Eazi and Yemi Alade, launched in Beyoncé’s The Lion King: The Gift soundtrack, there are other young exponents such as Young John, Dapo Tuburna, Davido, Afro B and Aya Nakamura who are doing a lot of talking about themselves.
Chino Amobi is also from a Nigerian family, a producer who grew up in the United States who, together with the Congolese (who emigrated to London and then Belgium) Nkisi and the South African Angel-Ho, launched the most experimental, afrofuturistic and militant current of sound. They are the three founders of the NON worldwide platform and label, a project that unites artists from the African diaspora with an interdisciplinary and unconventional approach to sound.