Marina Herlop is a classically trained vocalist and pianist from Barcelona. On her latest album Pripyat, she leaves the signposted road and gets deliberately lost in a magical forest of cut-and-paste piano melodies and bird calls. Like an heir to Meredith Monk, she lets her voice slip between guises: humming, whispering, singing…
She has also experimented with composition techniques from South Indian Carnatic music; one of which is konnakol, where chanted syllables are transformed into percussion. What at first listen might sound like lyrics in a cryptic language turn out to be vocal sounds beyond translation; no stories, just sound allowed to be sound.
Last time we had the pleasure to introduce Lorena Álvarez was for Clandestino Festival’s 10-year jubilee in 2012. Back then we described her trio as akin to a Spanish Moldy Peaches: a DIY folk band, reclaiming the traditional music of their native region Asturias. But since then Lorena Álvarez has branched out into a unique composer, producer and lyricist, impossible to pin down. She is a musical explorer, on a quest to understand the mysteries of life through sounds and poetry. Her modus operandi is to find cracks and crevices in contemporary life which the traditions of folk music can help fill. The latest EP contains songs in the ronda vein, recorded with a group of amateur musicians from the Pyrenees, while on the full length album Colección De Canciones Sencillas from 2019 she melds flamenco and baladas with subtle folk pop. In 2021 Lorena Álvarez also released the soundtrack to the video game Alba, filled with aural dreamscapes.
His career as a musician began in a Benedictine monastery near Madrid, when as a boy Víctor Herrero sang in a choir, performing Gregorian and Mozambican chants. He soon began studying classical guitar, at the same time as he formed the psych rock combo Cicely, which became a phenomenon in the Spanish capital. He also began collaborating with Josephine Foster, both live and on several of the American singer’s albums.
As a guitarist, Víctor Herrero is dynamic and sensitive on Spanish, electric and Portuguese guitars – and strongly rooted in traditions from the Iberian Peninsula, such as flamenco and fado. But his music is characterized by a desire to renew and find unique forms of expressions. Every now and then he lets his fingers rest for a while between their flights along the fretboard, instead allowing silence to speak between the notes – or singing and using words to tell his story
This autumn, his sixth solo album Pajarito Negro will be released, a collection of romantic songs recorded in Portugal and London with a group of folk string musicians. Other collaborations that Víctor Herrero has participated in in recent years include Keiji Haino, Master Musicians of Joujouka, Lorena Álvarez, Josefin Runsteen, Shahzad Ismaily, and many more.
In collaboration with Clandestino Festival curator Johan Zetterquist and this years artists are giving a guided tour of the exhibition.
Kl.13 Guided tour, in English Kl.15 Gudied tour, in Swedish
RSVP at number 0046733186532 or email info@uddenskulptur.se Free for all visitors of Clandestino Festival.
Welcome to the twelfth edition of Udden Skulptur in the old quarry at Norra Kajen in Hunnebostrand. This year’s exhibition consists of sculptures and installations by the artists Alina Chaiderov, Patrik Bengtsson och Mattias Norström.
“I could have given this exhibition a title such as: Conquering the Rock: Daring to Defy Damage or maybe Fantastic Charm: The Disjunction of the System or something else cool sounding… But after thinking long and hard, I, the devoted fan of titles, decided that the names of these three artists in combination with the still quite catchy Udden skulptur feels just right. Giving Alina Chaiderov, Patrik Bengtsson and Mattias Norström the opportunity to take on this grandiose and unique exhibition space also feels just right, it feels all the way down to the core right. These three artist whose practices I have had the great privilege of seeing up close as they have developed and grown stronger over the years.”
Johan Zetterquist, curator
Udden skulptur is a yearly exhibition in the old quarry at Norra Kajen in Hunnebostrand. Here in northern Bohuslän, quarrying started almost two hundred years ago, where the conditions were optimal. After the Second World War, orders decreased, and in the 70s the quarry at Udden was closed down. Plans for an extensive residential area were stopped by an opinion in 2010. Plans for making the area into a sculpture park was made possible in 2011.
Guedra Guedra a.k.a. Abdellah M. Hassak is a musician and producer from Morocco who explores the nomadic tribal cultures of North and West Africa, tracing the tracks from thousands of years of migration to crossroads of traditions where the continent’s music blossomed.
The sounds that form the backbone of the debut album Vexillology come from a library of field recordings. Choirs, flutes, string instruments; the sound of fire and cicadas; a riff consisting of looped bird sounds; hands clapping and feet stomping.
In this episode, Guedra Guedra talks to Markus Görsch about the process behind this highly imaginative collection of dance tracks.
Guedra Guedra makes dance music based on powerful rhythms and field recordings of both traditional tunes and natural sounds. His real name is Abdellah M. Hassak, he comes from Casablanca and already has a long list of music projects on his CV. In Guedra Guedra, he explores the nomadic tribal cultures of Northand West Africa, tracing the tracks from thousands of years of migration to crossroads of traditions where the continent’s music blossomed. The sounds that form the backbone of the debut album Vexillology come from a library of field recordings he built up while travelling in the region. Choirs, flutes, string instruments; the sound of fire and cicadas; a riff consisting of looped bird sounds; hands clapping and feet stomping – the connection between the human body and our sense of rhythm is a recurring theme on the album. By adding juicy slabs of synths and complex beats, Guedra Guedra binds all the fragments together and creates an ecosystem of sounds for the dancefloor.
One of Iran’s most important musicians and composers, Kayhan Kalhor was born to Kurdish parents in Teheran and already as a thirteen-year-old found himself playing in the National Radio and Television Orchestra.
At the age of seventeen his career was abruptly interrupted by the Iranian Revolution. Alone, with nothing but a suitcase and his favourite instrument – a kamancheh – he escaped to Europe and later to North America.
Since then he has become an internationally acclaimed soloist and collaborator with the likes of Yo-Yo Ma and the Silkroad Ensemble, the Kronos Quartet, the New York Philharmonic and many others.
In this interview, Kayhan Kalhor talks to Markus Görsch about tradition and innovation, about language, love and revolution.
His career as a musician began in a Benedictine monastery near Madrid, when as a boy Víctor Herrero sang in a choir, performing Gregorian and Mozambican chants. He soon began studying classical guitar, at the same time as he formed the psych rock combo Cicely, which became a phenomenon in the Spanish capital. He also began collaborating with Josephine Foster, both live and on several of the American singer’s albums.
As a guitarist, Víctor Herrero is dynamic and sensitive on Spanish, electric and Portuguese guitars – and strongly rooted in traditions from the Iberian Peninsula, such as flamenco and fado. But his music is characterized by a desire to renew and find unique forms of expressions. Every now and then he lets his fingers rest for a while between their flights along the fretboard, instead allowing silence to speak between the notes – or singing and using words to tell his story
This autumn, his sixth solo album Pajarito Negro will be released, a collection of romantic songs recorded in Portugal and London with a group of folk string musicians. Other collaborations that Víctor Herrero has participated in in recent years include Keiji Haino, Master Musicians of Joujouka, Lorena Álvarez, Josefin Runsteen, Shahzad Ismaily, and many more.
Fuzzy bass lines and a howling hammond organ. Clattering congas, and then to top it off: a brass section that would make Fela Kuti smile in his heaven. There you have the foundation of the music created by Nigerian trumpeter, singer and bandleader Etuk Ubong and his The Etuk Philosophy. He himself calls it “Earth Music”, a mix of fiery afrobeat, highlife and ritualistic ekombi beats.
It’s as danceable as it is politically pissed off, and more than a few syncopated punches are aimed at corrupted leaders and greedy businessmen on the new album Africa Today. While many musicians today polish and tweek endlessly in the studio to hide every little flaw, this band has recorded their songs straight up and down, completely live. Although this recording credo may expose the occasional squeaky trumpet note, above all it has allowed the creation of an album pulsating with the urgency of here and now. And while Etuk Ubong’s lyrics delve into what is rotten in the state of Nigeria, the music’s clear message is about unity, joy and supernatural grooviness.
Speaking of Fela’s smile: Unsurprisingly, Etuk Ubong has been hailed by the very Crown Prince of afrobeat, Seun Kuti, as one of the hottest performers out of Lagos.
In the midst of the newly erected high-rise buildings that have swallowed up downtown Addis Ababa, the club Fendika is still holding out, despite constant threat of eviction. The entrance is inconspicuous, but on the other side of it beats the very heart of the Ethiopian folk music revival. Fendika is a melting pot where a hip urban crowd mixes with traditional azmari musicians and dancers for intense music sessions, as well as a courtyard barbecue under the night sky.
The house band consists of some of Ethiopia’s finest musicians and dancers, who are building complex yet extremely danceable rhythms on instruments like krarand masengo. The band leader is the charismatic Melaku Belay, who, when he doesn’t perform with the band, tours world stages as a dancer.
Now the band has arrived in Sweden to turn Oceanen into Masthugget’s own Fendika for a weekend. Anyone who’s been there knows well what that means in terms of energetic playing and almost hypnotic dancing – and that you wouldn’t want to miss this for the world!
Viola Mukiibi, aka DJ VV, has lately graced multiple dance floors on the Swedish club scene with her DJ sets. She is also promulgating her own club concept “Club Given” that has been set up in several Swedish cities. Communicating a deep love for genres such as baile, kuduro, afro house, amapiano, contemporary club, sexy rnb edits and much more, the sets of DJ VV burrow deep and make lasting impressions on the soul.
Torsdag den 9 juni, 16–17.30 Göteborgs Stadsbibliotek, Trappscenen
The Square & the Revolution
A wave of uprisings has shaken cities around the world. Cairo, Athens, Beirut, Baghdad, Kyiv, Hong Kong, Santiago de Chile, Bogotá. Around the turn of the millennium, streets were taken over by a large and varied amount of self-organized resistance movements who considered another world to be possible. In occupied squares, demands were made for autonomy, justice and direct democracy in the 2010s. Today we live in the times of urban uprisings. What significance does the square have as a gathering place for opposition against privatization of the common and as a prominent space for the political?
Participants: Stefan Jonsson, Paulina de los Reyes, Mattias Gardell and Mathias Wåg Discussion moderator: Edda Manga This discussion will be held in Swedish
Stefan Jonsson Since his debut De andra, published in 1993, Stefan Jonsson has been one of Sweden’s foremost essayists. In a number of books he has explored the aesthetics of resistance, the masses and the revolution. He is a professor at the division of Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) at Linköping University. Jonsson was awarded Gerard Bonnier’s essay prize in 2021 and is currently working on the book Den otyglade skönheten: 5 saker konsten vet om demokratin (Norstedts), which will be released in August.
Paulina de los Reyes is a pioneer within postcolonial feminist research who has pinpointed the racism of “the people’s home” (folkhemmet), the hegemony of whiteness and the exclusionary mechanisms of capitalism. She is a professor in economic history at Stockholm University and has researched, among other things, the protests in Husby in 2013 and conditions of speech and the racialization of migrant mothers and their children. Parallel with her research, she has followed the protest movement in Chile, which she has reported on in Swedish press.
Mattias Gardell is Nathan Söderblom professor of comparative religious studies and has in various empirical fields investigated the relation between religion, politics, and racism. Gardell’s research interests include anti-Muslim racism (Islamophobia), occult fascism, political religion and religion/racism/violence.
Mathias Wåg is an activist, author and long-term member of the Brand collective. Together with Dominika Polanska, he has edited the book Ockuperat! Svenska husockupationer från 1968 till 2018 (2019), and runs the podcast Apans anatomi. The scrutiny of riots and uprisings from an autonomous Marxist perspective is a recurrent theme in his writing.
Edda Manga, together with Aleksander Motturi and Michael Azar, is one of the founders of the Clandestino Institute, she is currently the scientific leader at the Multicultural Centre and researches the relationship between democracy and migration.
Fredag den 10 juni, kl. 17–18:30 Göteborgs Stadsbibliotek, Trappscenen
Boundaries and movements
Border regimes generate movements and processes that are not only repressive but also productive: borders capture, orient, determine, shape and ensure the behaviors, gestures, opinions, feelings and discourses of living beings. Migration can be seen as a social movement that has the potential to change existing power relations. It is a force that creates alliances between movements working for global equality, justice and against exploitation, nationalism and racism.
Participants: Kamal El Salim, Balsam Karam, Sarah Philipson Isaac and Imri Sandström. Discussion moderator: Erling Björgvinsson This discussion will be held in Swedish
Kamal El Salim is an asylum activist enthusiast, filmmaker, DJ and debater. In the spring of 2022, he published the anthology 2015 – till asylrättens försvar together with Maria Padrón Hernández, that gathers 30 experiences from the refugee year 2015.
Balsam Karam is an author, librarian and teacher at the Literary Composition programme at HDK-Valand. Her debut was in 2018 with the critically acclaimed and highly appreciated novel Händelsehorisonten and this spring her novel Singulariteten was published, which among other things deals with losses of language, country and identity.
Imri Sandström is an artist, author, director and researcher. From a feminist and decolonial perspective, she examines language, history, performativity and translatability in a broad sense. Her unique study Across Unquiet Times (2019) sheds light on the complexity of settlers and indigenous peoples’ relationships, cracks in the stories and their silences and resonances between Västerbotten and New England.
Sarah Philipson Isaac is a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Gothenburg and researches border regimes, the welfare state’s exclusion mechanisms and state violence. Her dissertation focuses on how time and temporality are used in asylum processes as a form of exhaustion policy – but also on those who are exposed to this policy and their strategies for challenging and navigating its violent effects.
Erling Björgvinsson is professor of design at the Academy of Art and Design, Faculty of Fine Arts, Gothenburg University. A central topic of research is participatory politics in design and art, in particular in relation to urban spaces and the interaction between public institutions and citizens, as well as the relationship between aesthetics, narrativity and economics. He is currently working on a research project related to spatial imaginaries in relation to migration and recently edited a PARSE Journal issue titled Art and Migration.
Lördag 11 juni 15–16.30 Göteborgs Stadsbibliotek, Trappscenen
The frames of war
How do we recognize ”true” refugees, wars, and humans? “The frames of war” is a concept that was introduced by the philosopher Judith Butler to capture the normative frames that work to differentiate the lives we can apprehend from those we cannot. The current geopolitical order that for a long time has governed such normative frames is now trembling. This talk brings forth the place of antimilitarism in a highly militarized world, and the need for a renewed discussion on imperialisms, and ultimately raises the question on whether a global anti-war movement is possible in our present moment.
Participants: Michail Krzyżanowski, Pierre Schori, Frida Stranne, and Cecilia Åse. Discussion moderator: Julia Willén This discussion will be held in English
Michal Krzyzanowski is an internationally leading researcher of the media normalization of racism, fascism and social inequality. He is the scientific director at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Racism (CEMFOR) and is an expert on right-wing populism and the effects of neoliberalism in Poland. Among other things, he has published Uncivility, Racism and Populism: Discourses & Interactive Practices of Anti- & Post-Democratic Communication (2021).
Pierre Schori is an internationally well-known Social Democrat, former Minister for Development Aid, diplomat and author. For many years he was Olof Palme’s right-hand, and is today chair of the Olof Palme Memorial Fund. For decades, Schori has been an important voice in the Swedish peace movement and has raised sharp criticism against Israel’s occupation of Palestine, Sweden’s participation in the war against terrorism and a Swedish membership in NATO.
Frida Stranne is a peace and development researcher affiliated with the Swedish Institute for North American Studies at Uppsala University. Her research focuses on US foreign policy strategies and explanations for its current democratic and domestic political crisis. This autumn she will publish, together with Trita Parsi, the book Illusionen om den amerikanska freden (Ordfront).
Cecilia Åse is a political scientist and professor of gender studies at Stockholm University. Her work, which is rooted in feminist political theory and thinking about the relationship between state and violence, spans over themes such as gender and nationalism, security policy and memory-making over military death. Among her books are Monarkins makt (2009), Kris! Perspektiv på Normalmstorgsdramat (2014) and Feministiska perspektiv på global politik (2021).
Julia Willén Julia Willén is assistant lecturer and doctoral candidate at the Division for research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO) at Linköping University. Her writing has focused on post/colonial history, apartheid, memory studies and fictive writing.
Clandestino Talks är den samtalsdel av Clandestino Festival. Programmet arrangeras av Clandestino Institut –ett nätverk av kulturarbetare, konstnärer och forskare som sedan två decennier ligger bakom alternativa utbildningar, konstutställningar och en rad andra projekt. Institutet skapades som en otämjd plats för konst, kultur och tänkande som driver det kritiska samtalet om rasism, kolonialitet och migration. Till de mest uppmärksammade projekten hör Clandestino Festival, vars 20:e upplaga äger rum 9-12 juni 2022 samt Clandestino X Bottnafjorden som äger rum för 10:e gången 29-31 juli 2022. Bland övriga projekt i vår historia finns allt från litterära evenemang och kurser i kreativt skrivande till fonogramutgivning och internationell artistförmedling. Clandestino Institut drivs i form av ideell förening med bas i Göteborg.
As they started sing traditional songs together in the kitchen, they realised the need for a beat and began using kitchen utensils as musical instruments. Soon they felt they wanted to expand the horizons of their soundscapes, and on one recording you can hear a bathtub filling up with water, like a makeshift drone with the pitch slowly rising.
A decade later the Polish trio Sutari have established themselves as one of the most interesting acts on the new folk music scene in eastern Europe, with music that resonates well with how young musicians are redefining traditions all over Europe right now.
The most significant elements are the close harmonies, based on the Polish and Lithuanian singing style sutartinė, with voices so intricately weaved together it is often hard to tell them apart.
The violins act as rhythm instruments just as much as the percussion, giving the melodies a hypnotic drive, wedded to the ancient and universal strive towards a state of trance. That is how Sutari creates brilliant contemporary folk music: by erasing the boundaries between the urban and the rural, the tradition and the modern.
The composer and multiinstrumentalist Lea Bertucci works with a combination of performance and sound installations. Alto saxophone and bass clarinet are her go-to instruments, but flutes, organs, and field recordings also play important roles.
In 2021 she released A Visible Length of Light, an album that emerged out of a turbulent year in the USA. The beauty of the American landscape – beaches, mountains and prairies – is reflected in the compositions. But you can also hear the cities, desolate in lockdown, or as scenes for revolt and chaos. The feeling of alienation in one’s own native country hangs like a shadow over the music.
In this episode, Lea Bertucci talks to Markus Görsch about the physical and social geography of her home country – and about the idea of nature and how to make music inside a giant German bridge.
Although DJ Marcelle has been collecting music longer than most of us have been alive, she still feels like The Netherlands’ sweetheart. She’s an artist with a mischievous, rule-bending and almost ironic approach to her DJing, producing and radio hosting – cut with her trademark wit yet supported by an unquestionable amount of skill.
Well known for her three-turntable setup, DJ Marcelle makes compositions out of songs and symphonies out of mixes – colliding disparate genres, appropriated vocal snippets and warped soundscapes into a giant Frankenstein-like melting pot.
When Karl Jonas Winqvist found himself in the tiny fishing village Toubab Dialaw south of Dakar, he wasn’t able to communicate neither in French nor Wolof. But he did have the language of music, and through it he managed to make friends with some local musicians, setting in motion a collaborative project that continued online after he had returned home to Sweden. Out of this grew Wau Wau Collectif, as well as one of last year’s most thrilling releases. Wau Wau isn’t just a collective by name, the music is an epitome of collective creativity. To listen to their album Yaral Sa Doom is like sitting by the Atlantic coast with the cream of West Africa’s musicians and listening to them jam, find unexpected melodic paths and throw in ideas which lead to one song after another.
The music is characterised by Karl Jonas Winqvist’s searching aesthetic and open ears. One of the finest tracks on the album – Mouhamodou Lo and His Children – came about when Winqvist met a cab driver and family father from Senegal, and it came to light that the man wrote poetry and sang in his spare time.
But for all its spontaneity the record is just as much a result of skilled craftsmanship. In addition to the village musicians, it also features the Senegalese producer Arouna Kane, as well as the swedes Emma Nordenstam – a frequent collaborator of Winqvist’s – and Maria Arnqvist from the experimental folk duo Siri Karlsson.
During the last two decades Rizan Said has established himself as an extremely productive, genre-hopping songwriter for a long line of Syrian artists, while also reaching an international audience, not least through his collaborations with Omar Souleyman. His nimble and fast playing has given him the nickname “King of Keyboard” – which is also what he named his first solo album, released in 2015.
It all began in Ras Al Ain, in northeastern Syria. Already as a boy Rizan was proficient on flute, saz and accordion. After much ado he managed to get his hands on a synth and started transposing his accordion skills to the electronic keys. He had his first gigs as a musician at Kurdish weddings, and soon enough he was releasing cassette tapes, as well as writing scores for Syrian TV shows and movies. After having learnt Arabian shaabi, Rizan Said embarked on a long and fruitful partnership with Omar Souleyman, who was already a major star in the region.In recent years Rizan has lived in Sweden for periods and performed at many of Europe’s leading festivals. In 2019 he dropped Saz Û Dilan, his second solo album, filled with a cavalcade of electronic dabke music played on a keyboard in defiance of all speed limits.
Selda Bağcan was born in 1948 in Muğla, southwestern Turkey. As a university student in Ankara she started to perform on local stages and made contact with Cem Karaca, Barış Manço and other big names in Anatolian folk rock. Her brave social criticism and solidarity with the working class, combined with her powerful voice, soon made her famous as one of Turkey’s foremost protest singers. After a number of singles that supposedly sold in the millions, Selda’s debut album was released in 1976. On it was the song Yaz Gazeteci Yaz (= “write, journalist, write”) which was a demand for reporting on the country’s poverty, rather than bootlicking its elite.
After the military coup in 1980 the cultural climate in Turkey got harsher and many from the political end of the music scene left the country. Selda remained and was repeatedly imprisoned for her lyrics. But if the aim was to silence this loud songbird, the effect became the opposite: now Selda was a name everyone knew.
Four decades later she can be heard singing on stages the world over, as angry and as relevant as ever. In recent years her 70s output has also been re-released. Dr. Dre and Mos Def have sampled Selda, and young artists like Altin Gün have celebrated and covered her – all contributing to her growing international audience, beyond the Turkish diaspora. The precise political content of her lyrics may be partially lost in translation, but her passion always breaks through. Live she is backed by the Israeli quartet Bom Pam, recreating the Anatolian psych rock sound on guitar, keyboards, tuba and drums.
From Nairobi we welcome Emma Nzioka, more famous as Coco Em – DJ, producer and video artist. Positioned behind the record players she has made a name for herself as one of the hardest working disc jockeys in Africa. Her eclectic sets assemble Afro House, kuduro, kwaito, lingala and modern dance to electrify dance floors throughout Africa, Europe and North America.
Coco Em often works in community-based film and music projects focusing on women and trans rights. She is also one part of Sim Sima, a female DJ collective putting out a show on World Wide FM with Coco Em as resident record selector.At the beginning of this year she released a new single: Land (Black) First – a congas-spattered dub track about colonialism and land grabbing. It works as a teaser for the seven track EP Kilumi, due to drop in April on the label InFiné.
Camae Ayewa founded the project Moor Mother in 2012 and since then she has used her noise poetry to invite the listener on a journey through dystopic landscapes, guided by distorted voices, rhythmic glitches and electronic clamour. In her own words she is engaged in a mixture of “blk girl blues”, “project housing bop” and “slaveship punk”.
Her latest album Black Encyclopedia of the Air is a collaboration with Olof Melander, sound artist and producer from Malmö, with large dollops of free jazz, hip hop and electronica on his palette. Among many contributors on the record, rappers like Pink Siifu and Brother May are worth a mention. Moor Mother has called it her “sell-out album”, but everything is relative: the lyrics are still marinated in anxiety, and our society is depicted as a labyrinth without exit. Sure, there are lines about healing and about the sensation of having defeated one or two opponents, but the triumphs are temporary and the threats remain.In tracks like Clock Fight and Nighthawk of Time, she comes back again and again to questions of temporality: are we keeping time or is time keeping us? She questions accelerating demands of growth and profit, but also the very concept of linear history, and against it posits the need to assume control over our own stories.
A crackling sample from the dawn of the 20th century, filtered through modern effects, commences Nadah El Shazly’s debut album Ahwar. A few tracks later there is a cover of Sayyid Darwish, the artist considered by many to be the father of Egyptian popular music, working at the beginning of the 1900s. It is a cover whose relation to the original can be likened to the relation between a text and the paper it is written on. Nada El Shazly – who earned her wings in the underground scene of Cairo as both a punk and jazz singer – builds her version from a kalimba, a harp and double bass, and when the instrumentation almost falls apart, it is lashed back together by her voice. And that is how her music works. Even when it carries a clear reference – as to the old Cairo in the opening track, or to bebop in Koala – it remains at its core both timeless and rootless. It is port music; at home anywhere around the east Mediterranean, any time during the last century. Thus Barzakh, named after the Islamic equivalent to purgatory, might just as well be listened to in a rebetiko taverna in Piraeus as in an Egyptian café. And the club banger Palmyra transforms, without seeming to change much at all, to a jazz jam when it is played with a live band. The one thing that remains permanent is the deep powerful voice of Nadah El Shazly.
It was as an ironic result of leaving her hometown in northern Mexico – where music from the USA completely dominated the airwaves – that she became aware of the African roots of Latin American music. Since then she has worked hard to make up for lost years. After having lived in London and Berlin, Ana Lucia, a.k.a. Coco Maria, ended up in Amsterdam. From there she broadcasts her morning show Club Coco on Worldwide FM three days a week, playing contemporary Latin American music with clear ties to its traditional roots. She has directed particular attention to the exploratory and playful version of cumbia represented by Colombian groups like Romperayo, Frente Cumbiero and Meridian Brothers.
As a DJ she has spun records at festivals like We Out Here and collaborated with among others Wax Poetics and Gilles Peterson.
From her base in Amsterdam Coco Maria has also come to discover the music from Indonesia and Suriname, which she has incorporated in her increasingly eclectic musical universe, making the periphery central and rhythms essential.
There is something about the open spaces in the music produced by Dina Ögon. It is where you can slip through the soft wisps of Christopher Cantillo’s drumming and the staccato bass lines of Love Örsan, to sink into the dreamscape made up of Anna Ahnlund’s voice. Her lyrics are conversational and intimate, speaking of desires, or fears, or wanting to start all over from scratch. She has previously released two solo records under her own name: Omnejd and Lackmuspapper.
Serpentine guitar and piano lines come courtesy of Daniel Ögren, who has a solid CV of his own, including solo projects, as well as backing artists like Sven Wunder, Daniel Johnston and Anna von Hausswolff. Together with his bandmates in Dina Ögon he creates something like an airy funk sound with 70s psychedelic vibes – imagine Fleetwood Mac, Khruangbin and Ted Gärdestad jamming together in Motown Studios. Their debut album is eponymous and released on Sing a Song Fighter: a label run by Karl Jonas Winqvist of First Floor Power and fellow Clandestino act Wau Wau Collectif.
The experimental duo Senyawa is made up of the singer Rully Shabara and the instrumentalist Wukir Suryadi. Shabara’s singing stretches from black metal-influenced growl-techniques to a delicate falsetto. Suryadi builds his own instruments, and plays homemade string instruments made of bamboo, equipped with electric guitar microphones. Sometimes he plays acoustic, and sometimes the sound signals are channelled through a series of effects units. He plucks, grinds and drums on his peculiar instrument and thus creates anything from fragile melodies, to beats and pure noise.
Senyawa comes from the ancient city Jogjakarta in central Java, Indonesia. Their music reflects the traditional musical heritage from Java, filtered through a contemporary approach. They have collaborated with musicians such as Lisa Nordström and Arrington De Dionyso. Last year saw the release of their seventh album Alkisah, a doomsday story that begins in the early stages of civilisation’s collapse and continues via unsuccessful rescue attempts, towards complete apocalypse.
Arrington de Dionyso is a musician known for cross pollinating ancient traditions with transcendental exploration and rock ‘n’ roll. His main tools are his voice, the bass clarinet and a so-called bromiophone; a contra bass clarinet he constructed by himself out of plastic tubes. His wild improvisations, throat singing and harmonic overtones present him as equal parts shaman and punk rocker.
Arrington de Dionyso grew up in Chicago and as a young man he moved to the northwestern corner of the United States and made his living as a street musician, until he landed in Olympia and started studying ethnomusicology. Around the mid-90s he started the band Old Time Relijun and released a dozen albums on K Records. He later extended the ecstatic nerve fibres of his previous group to the project Malaikat dan Singa, in which he brought together gamelan music and the poetry of William Blake. That group performed at Clandestino Botnik 2012, but about that time Arrington de Dionyso was already searching for new influences in Indonesia, where he played together with the experimental duo Senyawa and studied Jathilan – a Javanese horse trance ritual.In his constant search for new musical meetings he has also played with the Master Musicians of Jajouka in Morocco, with baul-singers in Bangladesh, and with throat singing shamans in Tuva, Siberia; to name but a few.
Back when Park Jiha toured the world as one half of the duo 숨[suːm] she introduced a growing international audience to traditional Korean music, while at the same time positioning herself among avant garde acts like Jambinai and Black String. As a solo artist she builds on that same foundation, but is progressively moving further and further away from tradition, towards undefined lands. The Korean instruments are still there, but now they help to create something more akin to minimalism than folk. And what might at first listen sound like electronic effects, turn out to be Park Jiha treating the bamboo flute piri, the zither-like yanggeum and the hypnotic woodwind saenghwang in unorthodox ways, making them sparkle, crackle and contort around their own overtones. On her third album, Gleam, Park Jiha has as her stated aim ”to capture light with sound”. But neither her conceptual leanings, nor her sound experiments, are left as fait accompli. They are all the time subservient to her strong sense of melody and almost classical harmonies that appear to strive towards equilibrium.
When Kokoko! blew up the dance floor during their concert at Clandestino Festival 2017, they were unknown and had not even released a single. Since then, they have toured the globe, made a breakthrough gig at South by Southwest and signed with British label Transgressive. Kokoko! is a collaboration between musicians from Congo Kinshasa and French electronic groove maestro Débruit. During his first visit to the megacity of Kinshasa, he was completely overwhelmed. Electric power kept failing all over the city, but music was still heard on every street corner. The majority of musicians could not afford instruments but made use of whatever was at hand. When Débruit met members of Kokoko! and heard their complex techno jams on a xylophone made of plastic containers, accompanied by typewriter drums, he was blown away. It was the start of a collaboration where Kinshasa’s street sounds merge with the electronic playfulness loved by Débruit’s fans. The result could be heard on the debut album Fongola (2019), a futuristic party record beyond traditions and clichés about African music. Back with a vengeance, Kokoko! have a new single out entitled Donne moi, which can be seen as a commentary on the continuing plundering of Congo’s natural resources.
Djibouti: a tiny nation on the very tip of the Horn of Africa. For decades, their national music industry has been controlled by the state, and different music groups are run almost like companies by the government. One of these bands is Groupe RTD: the official radio orchestra of the country (RTD stands for “Radiodiffusion-Télévision Djibouti”). However, after ceremonies and state visits have been orchestrated, this nine-piece transforms into something wholly different. Their leisure time is spent cooking up groovy love songs in the style of Somali funk, topped with local flavouring. Because of its geographic location on the threshold between continents, Djibouti receives influences from all around the compass. Therefore, the DNA of Groupe RTD carries traces of Bollywood soundtracks, roots reggae, and American saxophone jazz. This can all be heard on the album Dancing Devils of Djibouti, the very first Djiboutian record released internationally on an independent label. That label is Obstinate Records, previously known for having introduced Somali music to Western audiences through the collection Sweet As Broken Dates.
The Physicist and author Agustín Fernández Mallo has had a crucial influence on contemporary Spanish literature. His acclaimed novel trilogy has given name to an entire generation of writers, the Nocilla generation. Agustín Fernández Mallo in a talk with Lina Wolff about the interplay between physics and authorship.
Fernández Mallo´s texts often move between reality and delirium, mixed with reflections and quotes from both science, journalism and popular culture. The characters in Nocilla Dream, the first part of the Nocilla triology, are hermits and odd solitaires linked together in spontaneous associations of people. If time has traditionally been the order principle in writing, Fernández Mallo prefers the room as the background for the human experience.
Lina Wolff is a writer, translator and literary critic. Her latest novel Carnality, for which she was awarded the Aftonbladet Literature Prize and nominated Swedish Radios novel prize. Her next novel, Djävulsgreppet will be published in the autumn of 2022. She has lived in Italy and Spain and translated works by Roberto Bolaño, Samanta Schweblin, César Aira and Gabriel García Márquez.
Yoshini Shigihara is a Japanese vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who was previously involved with Bristol’s psychedelic music collective Zun Zun Egui. After they broke up she launched the project Yama Warashi. The band name means “small spirit of the mountains”, and there is indeed something fairytale-like about this group’s playful compositions and theatrical stage costumes. With inspiration from Japanese folk dance, free jazz and psychedelia they create music that leaps from sensuous melodies to wild improvisation. Yama Warashi is a project set in constant motion, and to make sure they wouldn’t stop still for even a minute Yoshini Shigihara moved to London in 2019, looking for new inspiration and new band members. She found it in the scene around Total Refreshment Centre, where she became artist-in-residence. The latest single Dividual Individual offers a taste from this new phase of the band: here, a shimmering, pretty soundscape is provocatively contrasted with lyrics describing shocking scenes from the meat industry.
Electronic dub and out-there techno is the home territory of The Idealist. With records and tapes out on Höga Nord, iDEAL, Meakusma, Industrial Coast, Malmö Inre, to name but a few labels, he has built his own musical world deeply inspired by Jamaican dub, early Detroit techno and house, as well as late 80s industrial music. The Idealist – a.k.a. Joachim Nordwall – also has a background in experimental music and in bands like The Skull Defekts and FIRE! Orchestra. Furthermore he has been running the iDEAL label and production company since 1998. The Idealist’s DJ sets juxtapose 70s dub and reggae with all kinds of contemporary weirdness.
Under the pseudonym Deerest, the composer, cellist and organist Linnea Talp creates drone-influenced music, but with an underlying pop sensibility – music that has been likened to Anna von Hausswolff and Björk. But in the compositions that she is now releasing as a solo artist she has purified her music and shed almost everything except the bourdon notes themselves. Here the organ is allowed to take centre stage, with infinitely long chords, gradually developing and blossoming. The other instruments – flutes played by Martin Küchen and trombone by Mats Äleklint – are harmonising so closely to the organ, both in tone and timbre, that they almost can’t be told apart. Even the voice of Mariam Wallentin, when it chimes in, more or less takes on the character of yet another organ pipe.
This music was premiered back in November at the festival Sound of Stockholm, in S:t Clara church, and when it is now performed in Gothenburg we get to hear Linnea Talp take on another room rich in atmosphere, playing the church organ at the venue Skeppet.
With Foodman, you’re never absolutely sure when the next beat is gonna drop, or from which instrument. Japanese DJ and producer Takahide Higuchi got a lot of recognition for his album Ez Minzoku, which was named one of the best experimental releases of 2016 by Pitchfork. The record is an almost manic experience, with cut-up rhythms and naivist singing, where the instruments and the vocals are constantly shapeshifting. A bit like a conversation so brilliant and brimful of ideas that you’re only barely able to follow its twists and turns.
According to Foodman himself, he wrote his first music with the help of a PlayStation game, which does seem to make sense once you delve into his world. Nowadays, he is as productive as he is innovative, and often releases a couple of albums a year. In 2021, Yasuragi Land dropped, which continues the playful ingenuity of Ez Minzoku, but shifts its focus subtly: from a plethora of different sounds, to the tempos and beats in particular. On Yasuragi Land, the beat patterns are more intricate than ever, but at the same time they’re also circling closer to the dance floor. For contrast, he collaborated with Hair Stylistics on Hakimakuri Olympic the same year: a well nigh dystopian record – equally complex rhythmically, but veering towards noise rather than video games.
Edrix Puzzle is a relatively new constellation on the starchart of the London jazz firmament. This trio of professional improvisers is led by the drummer/producer Nathan “Tugg” Curran, famous for the grooves he lays down behind the drum set of Basement Jaxx, as well as in the projects Gorgon City and Planet Battagon. His playing in Edrix Puzzle veers towards rolling funk figures, which might have swirled down in the maelstrom of dark currents flowing from Martin Slattery’s woodwinds, if it weren’t for the dynamic double bass lines of Tom Mason, providing a secure anchoring. The Portuguese percussionist Oli Savill sits in, adding a battery of beats from mysterious sources, that together with some warped tape echos make for an alien setting on Edrix Puzzle’s first EP: Rise to Eris. Funk, jazz, dub – who cares about categories; all we know is that these three tracks build up the appetite for a full length debut, rumoured to be forthcoming on the label On the Corner this summer.
We are looking at the ruins of what might have been a grand villa. Stretched out among rubble and broken furniture lies a black-clad man in a beret. He growls and retches breathlessly. It is like a war scene, seconds after obliteration. But instead of machine guns and bombs we can hear a distorted Roland 808 blazing out singeli rhythms and trapbeats, while synths are firing laser beams across the ravished landscape. This is the music video for Mmaso, the first single from Ecko Bazz’s new album.
This Ugandan rapper deals in grime, dancehall and American hip hop, but brings it all back to Africa. With the emotional dial turned up to eleven he reports from his country’s slums: violence, religion and drug use are recurring themes in his lyrics, which he spits in Luganda.
On the forthcoming album (already named one of the year’s most important by both The Guardian and The Fader, prior to its release) Ecko Bazz has joined forces with a dream team of producers, including Debmaster, Slikback, DJ Die Soon and DJ Scotch Rolex. At Clandestino Festival he performs together with Chrisman, a Congolese producer specialising in heavy beats at the crossroads between hip hop, kuduro and tarraxinha.
In 2016, childhood friends Marta Torrella and Helena Ros set out to explore mysticism and timeless existential questions through the medium of a cappella music. They named the project Tarta Relena, and their self-invented genre, “progressive Gregorian”. But Gregorian chants are far from their only influence: their latest album Fiat Lux (= “let there be light”) is a veritable odyssey through centuries of choral expressions. Their harmonies are complex but Spartan, at times so minimalist as to make their very breathing a foundational part of the music. Backed by ominous beats and singing cicadas they give voice to Federico Garcia Lorca in the song Las Alamedas, but the lion share of the album is dedicated to female poets and composers. Tarta Relena tackle everything from Sephardic songs to tales from Afghanistan, while the track Safo is named after the famous archaic poet of Lesbos. At the end of the record, the Greek folk melody Me Yelassan serves as a worthy finale in a cascade of handclaps and intricate rhythms.
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou is a pianist, composer, and nun born in 1923. Her music is an airy combination of Western classical with scales and rhythms from Ethiopia.
As a student in Switzerland she heard a Beethoven concerto for the first time. The experience was so intense that she returned home to Addis Abeba with a firm desire to live her life in the service of music. When the chance to study at a conservatory in the United Kingdom was put to a halt by the emperor himself, Haile Selassie, it was as if the doors to her new life had slammed shut, just as suddenly as they had opened. Emahoy fell into a depression. She was close to starving herself to death before instead withdrawing from the world to a religious convent. During all of her years as a nun she continued to write delicately magical music without actually having any real audience. Her output would have probably disappeared in time if not for the French record series Éthiopiques, which devoted its entire 21st edition to the recordings of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.
Maya Dunietz—an Israeli pianist, composer, singer, choir conductor, and sound artist (among other things)—heard these recordings and, to her delight, discovered that Emahoy lived mere blocks away from her, in the Ethiopian church of Jerusalem. So it was there, in a cell furnished with only piano and bed, that their collaboration began. Maya Dunietz received a huge, unwieldy pile of scores, the result of 70 years of withdrawn composing. She published them and arranged a concert in honour of Emahoy’s 90th birthday, and has since introduced Emahoy’s oeuvre to a large international audience – including a concert at Clandestino Festival 2017. Dunietz describes this enormous treasure as classical music composed with a very special relationship to time, space, and the resounding landscape. Not grandiose, but intimate and profound.
Marina Herlop is a classically trained vocalist and pianist from Barcelona. In her previously released music the traditions of Western art music can be clearly distinguished, but on her upcoming third album she leaves the signposted road and gets deliberately lost in a magical forest of cut-and-paste piano melodies and bird calls. Like an heir to Meredith Monk, she lets her voice slip between guises: humming, whispering, singing…
She has also experimented with composition techniques from South IndianCarnatic music; one of which is konnakol, where chanted syllables are transformed into percussion. What at first listen might sound like lyrics in a cryptic language turn out to be vocal sounds beyond translation; a form of concrete poetry. This could all sound pretentious, but Marina Herlop’s music is also immediate and enjoyable. No stories, no metaphors: just sound allowed to be sound.
Who is he – Wilfried Luzele, the man in crimson tunic and tin can goggles? This odd apparition out of Kinshasa’s underground scene comes from a difficult background. After having lost both his parents at an early age he was brought up by relatives. His first tangling with music came as a choirboy at the local church, where he had a hard time conforming – tending to break out in rap rather than singing hymnal harmonies. To escape his harsh circumstances, Wilfried began inventing aliases for himself: Sorcier d’Art; Double-King; a fashionista in the Congolese sapeur-style. But by the time he released the EP Mutu Wa Ngozi the afro-futurist magician/pharaoh Lova Lova was born, in full red regalia. With lyrics in Lingala, Kikongo and French, he paints humourous visions of life in the megacity Kinshasa, as well as the parallel universes he sees through his steampunk spectacles.
In 2022 Lova Lova is putting the final touches to his third album. Where formerly he would tell his tales over electronic beats, he is now backed by a live trio of a drummer and no less than two funky bassists. Hip hop, soukous and a touch of Caribbean backbeat are welded together into a cosmic thunderbolt.
The time is the 1990s, the place: jazz clubs in Bogotá, Colombia. Three guys find each other and go on to form numerous bands and projects together. They are starting to grow tired of their Ornette Coleman-collections and instead start digging through the crates of Latin American music – cumbia, champeta, lambada, and other local styles. Los Pirañas is born out of this exploration and while they begin gigging as dinner entertainment at local restaurants, their sound is too untamed and original to remain as background music. Soon this psychedelic dance-trio was touring the world and to date they have released four albums.
The signature guitar style of Eblis Alvarez- feverish and effect-laden – is as characteristic of Los Pirañas as it is in his other band Meridian Brothers. Drawing on 60s Peruvian surf-cumbia he adds a glitchy contemporary twist to his noodling by way of his many pedals and boxes.
In the rhythm section Pedro Ojeda seems engaged in a never-subsiding drum solo, inspired by the raw sound of cumbia from the 50s and 60s. He is playing on a drum set where the tom toms have been exchanged for timbales and cow bells. Meanwhile, the bass playing of Mario Galeano anchors the madness with fast, but steady and unshowy lines. Together they play in almost telepathic unison, where their mostly improvised instrumentals might shift tempo and intensity at any time, without warning.
With a mother giving piano lessons at their home, music appeared as natural as spoken language for the young Naoko Sakata. She couldn’t get her head around notation though, so instead she learned piano by memorising and copying her mother’s students – as well as different TV signatures – by ear. After an intense 2Pac phase during her teens, she discovered jazz, but was as soon disenchanted with it, as she learned about all the rules and theory hiding behind the free-sounding music. Things, however, started to fall into place when Naoko Sakata left Japan for Gothenburg to study improvisation. Finally her intuition and emotions were given free range to steer the music.
Listening to Sakata’s music is like entering a world without boundaries: a soft sensual breeze might grow into an atonal tempest within a single five-minute track. Her most recent album Dancing Spirits consists of seven improvisations, recorded in Annedalskyrkan in Gothenburg and released on Pomperipossa Records, the label created by Anna von Hausswolff. Even if you’ve heard Naoko Sakata before, we dare promise a new and different experience at Clandestino.
Morocco’s infatuation with the banjo began in earnest in the 1970s. It was then that groups such as Nass El Ghiwane introduced this instrument to a broader Moroccan audience. A decade later Hassan Wargui was growing up in an isolated village in the south-western parts of the Atlas Mountains – a region where the songs and rhythms of the amazigh culture were omnipresent. He built his first instruments by hand and learned to play by imitating his idols.
It wasn’t until several years later, after having moved to Casablanca, that Hassan bought his first proper banjo. Since then he has played with bands like Imanaren and Etran Tiznit, and also collaborated with the American producer Jace Clayton (DJ/Rupture). Unlike many other musicians in his tradition, Hassan Wargui has always been writing songs of his own, inspired by the tunes and landscapes of the Atlas region, but also introducing electronic elements. His album Tiddukla existed on YouTube for years before finally getting a physical release this spring. With intensity and warmth Hassan Wargui and his band build on the heritage from the classic amazigh groups, while paying tribute to those who dared to sing in tachelhit during the times when it was still a forbidden language. It is with joy and pride we present this concert as part of Hassan’s first European tour.
In the 1970s he had the dance floors of Addis Abeba at a boiling point. Back then Hailu Mergia was the bandleader for Walias Band, flagship of Ethiopian jazz, and played with among others the vibraphone virtuoso Mulatu Astatke. But after the overthrow of Haile Selassie and his government, stronger and stronger restrictions were visited upon the cultural life of Ethiopia. And so, during an American tour with Walias Band, Hailu Mergia decided to remain in the States and seek his fortune as a musician in Washington DC instead.
He worked a day job as a taxi driver while continuing to write and play music, now completely on his own. A drum machine, an electric piano and a Yamaha DX7 were the tools of his trade, together with the accordion, which now became an emotional throughline to the music of Ethiopia. When his cassette tape His Classical Instrument was re-released by Awesome Tapes From Africa in 2013, it found unexpected success, and a new chapter in Hailu Mergia’s career began. Since then he has released two albums of new material – the latest one being Yene Mircha from 2020 – and played hundreds of gigs for new as well as old fans. This legend has already visited Clandestino Festival twice, in 2013 and 2015, and now it is finally happening again: Hailu Mergia, this time together with America’s leading Ethio-jazz bass player Alem Kebede, and the equilibrist drummer Ken Joseph of Culture.
Guedra Guedra makes dance music based on powerful rhythms and field recordings of both traditional tunes and natural sounds. His real name is Abdellah M. Hassak, he comes from Casablanca and already has a long list of music projects on his CV. In Guedra Guedra, he explores the nomadic tribal cultures of Northand West Africa, tracing the tracks from thousands of years of migration to crossroads of traditions where the continent’s music blossomed. The sounds that form the backbone of the debut album Vexillology come from a library of field recordings he built up while travelling in the region. Choirs, flutes, string instruments; the sound of fire and cicadas; a riff consisting of looped bird sounds; hands clapping and feet stomping – the connection between the human body and our sense of rhythm is a recurring theme on the album. By adding juicy slabs of synths and complex beats, Guedra Guedra binds all the fragments together and creates an ecosystem of sounds for the dancefloor.
Ancient folk music from the Balkans meets minimalist electro-jazz in the compositions of this Berlin-based power trio. The album Down in the Meadow was created during lockdown. Trapped in the studio, the three musicians went deep into experimental mode. Due to the pandemic, they had been forced to clear their otherwise full calendars. Svetlana Spajic is the group’s expressive singer, known not least for her collaborations with Stella Chiweshe, Marina Abramovic and Antony and the Johnsons, just to name a few. For years she has visited villages in Serbia and the rest of the Balkans, studying unique singing traditions and vocal techniques, music that has only been passed on orally. She is backed by Guido Möbius, producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist who creates drone-like electronic sounds, loops and plays an occasionally bowed electric bass. The group is completed by Andi Stecher, a jazzy minimalist on the drum set and glittering metal objects.
In an explosion of energy the DJ and vocalist from Fun-Da-Mental takes to the mixer deck: ritual incantations, bass-heavy electronica and traditional music from everywhere and nowhere pour out. An orgy of genres sets the dance floor ablaze while spoken word, comedy, marketplace recordings, Algerian radio broadcasts and street musicians from Jaipur are interwoven into the eclectic mixes of D.WattsRiot, a.k.a. Dave Watts.
As a teenager he left London for Canada, where he discovered soul, funk and early hip hop. Having returned to England he found work in the record industry while joining Fun-Da-Mental, whose records he adorned with his vast archive of sound fragments, collected from movies, radio, phone calls, etc.
Today Watts lives in Tenerife, where he is the co-curator of the genre-transcending music festival Keroxen. He has also released a debut solo album under his other alias KingLMan.
D.WattsRiot has contributed to many previous editions of Clandestino Festival, both as co-curator and as DJ – we are delighted to welcome him back!
Can you combine cumbia and grindcore? Bolero and metal? Sure, if you place a human octopus like Pedro Ojeda behind the drums and add a demonic keyboard player in the form of Eblis Alvarez of Meridian Brothers. Decked out in yellow and red robes they will detonate a deranged, partly improvised, discharge on stage, in which everything appears distorted, dislodged and wildly modulated – like a Disney Time in hell. “Chúpame el dedo” means “suck my finger” and the lyrics of this Colombian super-duo remain on that level of poetic ambition. The project was launched as Alvarez – an old fan of bands like Venom and Massacre – was asked to concoct a death metal band with Latin American flourishes for a German festival on the theme “evil music”. Back in Bogotá’s underground it’s common practice to play in as many constellations as possible, and so the duo kept Chúpame El Dedo going, alongside their other bands (including Los Pirañas, also playing at this year’s festival). On their second album No Te Metas Con Satan, they turn the pitch up even higher, gleefully deconstructing clichés of both metal and Colombian folk, while inviting Lucifer to the dance floor.
This Nigerian MC is as explicit and unafraid as they come. Aunty Rayzor, aka Bisola Olugbenga, has already at a young age made a name for herself as one of the hottest names in West African hip hop. She had an underground hit with Kuku Corona, a defiant burst of joy that captured the pent up spirit of the times after lockdown and frustration. The track that propelled her on after that was called Momo – slang for a bad-mouthing guy – a raunchy kuduru feast produced by 4DOZO from Limbololo Sound System.
At the time of writing Aunty Rayzor is putting the final touches to her debut album Lagos Virtual Reality. For this she has traded the chaos of the Nigerian metropolis for the somewhat more laid back surroundings of the label Nyege Nyege in Kampala. Superstars like Debmaster, Rey Sapienz and Cris Fontedofunk are all featured on this eagerly anticipated full length release.
In the electronic underground of East Africa, Alai K was previously known as Disco Vumbi, and for his cassette tape Boutiq Electroniq, released on Nyege Nyege Tapes. But this year he performs reincarnated as himself.
Alai K grew up in Kenya – the youngest in a long line of musicians, from which he derived a deep understanding of ritual dance. A few years ago he moved to Berlin, where he lived in a tiny apartment and installed a studio in his kitchen – having to deconstruct it each time he needed to cook dinner. He became a regular at the famous rave clubs of the German capital and fell in love with techno. Its drawn out, repetitive beat mixes struck him as an electronic counterpart to the ritual dance music of his upbringing. Together with Izo Anyanga – another Kenyan emigré – he started an attempt to make these two sonic universes converge. They recorded long polyrhythmic jams on drums, marimba and xylophone, which they then cut and pasted into a kind of acoustic techno, topped with flutes and sampled chanting. The result can be heard on the album Kila Mara, released by On the Corner, and at Clandestino 2022!
Without fear there can be no courage. And courage, why, that’s the driving force behind the creative efforts of Alabaster dePlume – a musician who delves head first into what frightens him, time and again. This might sound like cheesy self help clichés, but that sort of naïvete is exactly his MO: the goal is to disarm the listener and open a space for empathy. Alabaster’s real name is Angus Fairbairn and he used to be active within different noise music constellations in Manchester before he took on the saxophone, moved to London and became part of the capital’s burgeoning jazz scene. His music breaks free from formulas and formalism, heading for the same cosmos that Beverly Glenn Copeland and Alice Coltrane have explored, albeit in his case with a dose of English dry humour.
Many of his compositions are poems set to music, superficially childish, but given weight by his voice to impress on the listener the important and true mission to “Be Nice To People”.
In 2020 he released the album To Cy & Lee: eleven instrumentals centered on his airy tenor saxophone. The record was inspired by his work with mental health patients and became a surprising hit. On the upcoming release Gold, dePlume sets out once more into the unknown, collaborating with new constellations of musicians for almost every track. Alabaster dePlume’s concert at Clandestino 2022 is presented together with Textival.
With repetitive rhythms and serpentine guitars, desert blues has become a beloved phenomenon across the world. But compared to superstars like Tinariwen and Ali Farka Touré, Etran de L’Aïr come across as a rowdy party gang. According to themselves, this family collective is a “wedding band for people with no money”. In their take on the genre, two, sometimes three, guitarists seem to want to prove their soloing chops simultaneously. The drums clatter along like some mad machine while the vocals threaten to blow both fuses and speakers.
These riotous vibes are well captured on their new album Agadez; recorded live and named after their hometown. There, in the heart of the Aïr region of Niger, the band was formed in 1995. Equipped with a sole acoustic guitar and a calabash upon which they kept rhythm with a sandal, the group would play weddings and other events in their early days. With their earnings they soon acquired electric guitars and drums, and by today there is hardly a single block in that town that hasn’t rocked and reverberated with the desert punk of Etran de L’Aïr.
The korean term ’haepaary’ translates as jellyfish, and indeed, this two-headed medusa of a band stretches out its tentacles through both time and space. Part futuristic electronica, part 14th century vocal stylings and percussion from the Joseon dynasty, this project sounds like nothing else.
Choi Hyewon is both the producer and multi-instrumentalist of the duo. In addition to synths and programming she also plays samul nori, a set of percussive instruments including gongs and a giant bass drum. The rhythmic patterns of the genre draw from rural harvest celebrations.
Meanwhile, Park Minhee’s singing builds on the tradition of gagok – once a form of music reserved for the ruling class, but nowadays popular throughout the population and proclaimed a word heritage by UNESCO. The duo’s tradi-modern concoction also includes visual elements, from Korean court dances to 3-D animations. Up till now Haepaary have only released a handful of singles and EPs, but the international music press as well as the SXSW festival have already capitulated in face of these virtuosos’ unique combination of cultural heritage and transcendental electronics.
Death and disappointments are subjects that this Finnish ensemble creates great entertainment from. However, the main theme of Jaakko Laitinen & Väärä Raha is still love: bittersweet, euphoric, or a source of despair. The matter is picked apart and viewed both from a cosmic perspective and from the bottom of a wine bottle. Trumpet, bouzouki accordion, double bass and drums create a rich mix of Balkan stomp, Finnish humppa and tango.The mighty baritone voice belongs to Jaakko Laitinen. With pomaded hair and a red velvet blazer, he is a complete estrador in the cut of Olavi Virta. Despite the colorful appearance, however, it is impossible to mistake his genuine feeling for the music from Lapland. Jaakko Laitinen & Väärä Raha (= “fake money”) was founded in 2009 and has since released four acclaimed albums, including Börek from 2020. Diligent playing in everything from dance halls in the far north to clubs in Helsinki has given them a reputation as Finland’s best live band.
Calls, moans and vocal fragments play a central role in the sound of Phelimuncasi, a sound that is also characterised by hyper-creative beat programming with seemingly endless tom rolls. The three members Malathon, Makan Nena and Khera began collaborating in Durban ten years ago, during a wave of dark, minimal dance music that came to be known as gqom. Not ones to abide by genre boundaries, Phelimuncasi paired their dancefloor beats with storytelling in the form of isiZulu spoken word – a tradition that stretches back to toyi-toyi; the expressive chant and dance routine associated with anti-apartheid demonstrations in 1970s South Africa.
Their album 2013-2019 features collaborations with producers like DJ MP3 and Menzi, and is a retrospective of tracks created during a six-year period. That might seem like a long time for scraping together nine tracks, but then, it resulted in one of the densest, most meticulous – why, one of the best – releases on the Ugandan label Nyege Nyege Tapes.
This South-African party machine has previously turned on their pressure cooker during the Clandestino Festival in 2019. Now they are finally about to release a new album and thus we get an excuse to invite this seven strong band once more.
BCUC stands for Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness. They formed in Soweto, just a stone’s throw from the church where Desmond Tutu hid anti-apartheid activists back in the day. Their origin was in a container, turned restaurant, turned rehearsal space. With funky bass lines, signal whistles, a plethora of drums, as well as singing and rap in Zulu, Sotho and English, they set off a hedonistic dance explosion that seconds as a weapon in the fight for equality. In their own words they provide an ”emo-indigenous Afro psychedelic fire from the hood”. Their compositions are long; often upwards of twenty minutes. With an impressive instinct for dynamics, they let the pressure build and build, to then suddenly hold back… and set off anew in another direction.
Last time we had the pleasure to introduce Lorena Álvarez was for Clandestino Festival’s 10-year jubilee in 2012. Back then we described her trio as akin to a Spanish Moldy Peaches: a DIY folk band, reclaiming the traditional music of their native region Asturias. But since then Lorena Álvarez has branched out into a unique composer, producer and lyricist, impossible to pin down. She is a musical explorer, on a quest to understand the mysteries of life through sounds and poetry. Her modus operandi is to find cracks and crevices in contemporary life which the traditions of folk music can help fill. The latest EP contains songs in the ronda vein, recorded with a group of amateur musicians from the Pyrenees, while on the full length album Colección De Canciones Sencillas from 2019 she melds flamenco and baladas with subtle folk pop. In 2021 Lorena Álvarez also released the soundtrack to the video game Alba, filled with aural dreamscapes. For the concert at Ävja Folkets Hus her band is joined by guest guitarist and singer Victor Herrero.
This group borrows its name from the god of music in Candomblé mythology. The singer and percussionist Jabu Morales is a student of this Afro-Brazilian religion and the musical riches connected to it. Over a decade ago she left her home in Minas Gerais in the Brazilian interior and moved to Barcelona. There she met two Italian musicians: the accordionist Alberto Becucci and the percussionist Timoteo Grignani. They immediately sensed the musical alchemy they’d be capable of, and soon fleshed out their musical project with yet another percussionist – Walter Martins, as well as guitarist Ricardo Quinteria and bassist Fransisco Valente. Together, Ayom weave an intricate web of rhythms from forró, samba, cambia and calypso, which is then embellished with Mediterranean accordion melodies.
One of Mali’s biggest stars of recent decades, Grammy-awarded Oumou Sangaré is known for having repeatedly reinvented wassalou, a genre with ancient roots in the country’s southwestern parts. It is a form of music loaded with storytelling and messages, often performed by female artists. In Oumou Sangaré’s renditions the content often revolves around women’s rights and a critique of polygamy and forced marriages.
It was none other than Ali Farka Touré who performed the role as talent scout when she signed her first record contract. Soon after, the young singer and composer found herself on a seemingly endless tour of Europe, Asia and Africa. She has since then collaborated and recorded with esteemed names such as Herbie Hancock, Konono No 1 and Beyoncé, while parallel to her music career she has also founded a hotel, launched her own car model and worked for the UN.In 2022 the voice of Oumou Sangaré is richer and deeper than ever. On the freshly released album Timbuktu she flirts with American blues and folk, while remaining true to the evergreen heritage of Mali music. But it’s been a long time since Oumou Sangaré could be pigeonholed; she is a whole genre to herself.
Otis Sandsjö is the initiator and mastermind behind the band Y-OTIS. He is a Berlin based saxophonist with roots in Gothenburg, Sweden, known for his highly original genre-bending, forward-looking liquid jazz sounds. After his esteemed self-titled debut album in 2018, he’s now back with Y-OTIS 2, released by the respected We Jazz Records in Helsinki and produced by Koma Saxo’s multi-talent Petter Eldh. Otis Sandsjö’s’ sound is described as an “audio mosaic” fusing together a selection of micro moods, inspired as much by hip-hop and electronica as by jazz. The hypnotic saxophone riffs and fragmented jazz style manage to build strong melodies and funk beats whilst remaining fluid. The group also includes Petter Eldh (bass and synths), Dan Nicholls (keyboard and synths), and Tilo Weber (drums).
At the beginning of the 20th century, the taarab music of Zanzibar was revolutionized by the singer Siti Binti Saad. In stark contrast to previous versions, hers was an improvised people’s music with lyrics in both Arabic and Swahili. As the first female superstar of the genre, Siti Binti Saad also paved the way for coming generations – one of them being her great granddaughter Siti Muharam, who is bringing new life to the old songs on a much acclaimed album called Siti of Unguja.
In this episode of Clandestino Podcast, Markus Görsch is joined by Siti Muharam as well as oud player Hassan Mahenge and Pete Buckenham of the record label On the Corner. We’ll hear about the process behind this album and about Siti Binti Saad’s importance for the music of Zanzibar.
Ancient folk music from the Balkans meets minimalist electro-jazz in the compositions of this Berlin-based power trio. The album Down in the Meadow was created during lockdown. Trapped in the studio, the three musicians went deep into experimental mode. Due to the pandemic, they had been forced to clear their otherwise full calendars. Svetlana Spajic is the group’s expressive singer, known not least for her collaborations with Stella Chiweshe, Marina Abramovic and Antony and the Johnsons, just to name a few. For years she has visited villages in Serbia and the rest of the Balkans, studying unique singing traditions and vocal techniques, music that has only been passed on orally. She is backed by Guido Möbius, producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist who creates drone-like electronic sounds, loops and plays an occasionally bowed electric bass. The group is completed by Andi Stecher, a jazzy minimalist on the drum set and glittering metal objects.
Mabe Fratti is an experimental cellist, singer and composer. She grew up in Guatemala, but moved to Mexico City after falling in love with the city’s underground scene. Here she could move away from the classical cello repertoire and deeper into improvisational music. On her two albums, gentle pizzicatto tones can be heard one moment, only to swell into thick blocks of distorted sound, layer upon layer in the next. Mabe Fratti often performs in a trio format which also includes electric guitar and synth – as well as crickets and other sounds from nature. Rich soundscapes grow organically and vibrate under Mabe Fratti’s ethereal vocals. Pitchfork, NPR and The Wire have all given her glowing reviews, and in The Guardian, her debut Pies Sobre la Tierra was named Global Album of the Month. The sequel Será Que Ahora Podremos Entendernos? examines themes around language and meaning-making. TICKETS
Clandestino Festival has been organised since 2003 by the non-profit association Clandestino Institut. The festival has been made possible by support from Västra Götalandsregionens Kulturnämnd, Statens Kulturråd and Göteborgs Stad Kulturnämnd.
Clandestino Festival takes place on a number of different stages, which means that accessibility can vary. Here we have compiled information about the accessibility that is available in the various premises.
Folkteatern – They have audience hosts at their events who can help you when you are here. – On the entrance floor there is an adapted toilet. – If you have a hearing impairment, you can borrow a personal receiver that can be used with your hearing aid. – For those who use a wheelchair or permobile, there are special places in the salon. If you need such a place, notify the ticket office when booking. If you have an assistant with you, they get a free ticket. When you come to the show, their audience hosts will help you, but come in good time so they have time to solve this in the best way possible. For example, you may need to take the elevator up to the floor where the scenes are. – There are parking spaces for the disabled.For further questions, you can read more here, or contact Folkteatern at: 031-60 75 75
Kulturhuset Oceanen – It is possible to enter the stage room with a wheelchair via the back of Kulturhuset. – Inside the stage room there is a customized WC. For questions about accessibility, you can contact Oceanen by calling 031-147100 or email info@oceanen.com in good time for help with special requests.
Humanists – There is a lift from the street level to get into the building, as well as lifts in the house – RWC exists
Sjömanskyrkan / Skeppet GBG – For those who can not go up stairs, there is a lift from street level. The staff is happy to help. – For more info and contact information, click here.
Pustervik Wheelchair users can easily get to Pustervik with their lift that goes from the street to all their planes. Please take the help of guards or other staff to access the elevator. Any accompanying assistant / companion does not need to buy a ticket / free entrance. For the latest info, click here.
Gothenburg City Theater – For practical information on accessibility, click here.
Folkteatern Göteborg – For practical information on accessibility, click here.
Fasching Fasching is located in an older room with steps up to the main entrance. Wheelchairs are easiest to enter via the stage entrance on Gamla Brogatan 44. Feel free to contact Fasching in advance so they can be helpful when you arrive. – RWC is available – For more information on additional accessibility click here
Gothenburg Film Studios – For current info, click here
Humanisten Gothenburg University – Outside the main entrance on Renströmsgatan there are two disabled parking spaces and a large mooring. Guides from the berth lead to the Humanities Library and to the Humanists. – Inside the Humanisten there are guideways to central functions such as orienteering board, Service Center, RWC and central elevator shaft where you can reach all floors. – All classrooms, group rooms and the like are marked on the entrance information board in Braille.
Skogen – At present, there is no adaptation on Skogen’s stages, but the staff is helpful in arranging so that everyone is welcome. For current info about the availability and contact with the staff to be able to get on their different scenes, click here.
Malmö Sommarscen – For current info about the accessibility of their various scenes, click here
Inkonst – The entrance is easily accessible for wheelchair users, no steps. Close to Bergsgatan for possible special transport – RWC easily accessible in the foyer – Everything is on the same level, except for the stage level in the theater – Wheelchair spaces in the theater on the ground floor and the opportunity to sit on the stage (however, requires assistance with a lift by staff) – Hearing loop in the theater that can be activated during warning – For questions email: info@inkonst.com
Botnik Studios – The stage is outdoors on the ground floor
KKV Bohuslän – The stage is outdoors on the ground floor
The 20th edition of Clandestino Festival takes place at the following venues around Gothenburg, click on the name of the venue to be redirected to a map:
From the underground scene of Nairobi, Kenya comes this duo consisting of Martin Khanja and Sam Karagu. As Duma they make extreme metal using samples of traditional drumming, synthesizers, found sounds and drums machines, sometimes played at a mindblowing 666 beats per minute. They both used to play in bands with traditional lineups including guitars and drumkits. But when one of these groups – The Seeds of Datura – drifted apart, Martin and Sam decided to cross the border to Uganda and record for the experimental label Nyege Nyege Tapes.
Moroccan singer and master of several string instruments Majid Bekkas is one of the foremost modern gnawa musicians. He is also one of the genre’s superspreaders to the west through his collaborations with jazz legends such as Archie Shepp and Pharaoh Sanders. And lately, he has been playing with the Magic Spirit Quartet alongside Swedish trumpeter Goran Kajfeš and others. In episode nine, Markus Görsch talks to Majid Bekkas about all these collaborations, and about the magic that is musical improvisation.
Gyedu Blay Ambolley first made a name for himself in the Swinging Accra days of the sixties, as a member of the Uhuru Band together with Ebo Taylor. Ghana was celebrating its liberation from the colonial masters and highlife was the soundtrack. For a long time, this West African dance music had been played exclusively on congas and other rhythm instruments, but after the advent of calypso, guitars were introduced and bands competed to create the most intricate melodic layers.
A few years later, highlife was already on the way down, and everyone was looking for a way forward. While others copied James Brown uninhibitedly, Gyedu Blay Ambolley was now looking for ways to marry parts of the American sound with Ghana’s own heritage. He formed the funk-jazz combo Apagya Show Band, again with Ebo Taylor. At the same time, he released the solo effort The Simigwa, which he calls the world’s first rap song. The compilation albums Ghana Soundz 1 & 2 give an indication of the importance of Gyedu-Blay Ambolley during that time. In one way or another, he participates in almost every other song: as a singer, saxophonist, bassist or composer. Today, he is known as a living afro-funk legend all over the world, and has become a sought-after guest artist in Ghana’s hiplife scene – for example in a remake of The Simigwa with the duo Replay. But at the same time, Gyedu Blay Ambolley remembers his roots. On his thirty-first album 11th Street, Sekondi, he looks back to the highlife music that shaped him as a young man.
Gyedu Blay Ambolley first made a name for himself in the Swinging Accra days of the sixties, as a member of the Uhuru Band together with Ebo Taylor. Ghana was celebrating its liberation from the colonial masters and highlife was the soundtrack. For a long time, this West African dance music had been played exclusively on congas and other rhythm instruments, but after the advent of calypso, guitars were introduced and bands competed to create the most intricate melodic layers.
A few years later, highlife was already on the way down, and everyone was looking for a way forward. While others copied James Brown uninhibitedly, Gyedu Blay Ambolley was now looking for ways to marry parts of the American sound with Ghana’s own heritage. He formed the funk-jazz combo Apagya Show Band, again with Ebo Taylor. At the same time, he released the solo effort The Simigwa, which he calls the world’s first rap song. The compilation albums Ghana Soundz 1 & 2 give an indication of the importance of Gyedu-Blay Ambolley during that time. In one way or another, he participates in almost every other song: as a singer, saxophonist, bassist or composer. Today, he is known as a living afro-funk legend all over the world, and has become a sought-after guest artist in Ghana’s hiplife scene – for example in a remake of The Simigwa with the duo Replay. But at the same time, Gyedu Blay Ambolley remembers his roots. On his thirty-first album 11th Street, Sekondi, he looks back to the highlife music that shaped him as a young man.
K.O.G. is short for Kweku of Ghana. However, his real name is Kweku Sackey: A singer, rapper and multi-instrumentalist who came to Sheffield just over ten years ago to pursue an academic career but instead became a central figure in British Afro-futuristic music scene. Through his work with the projects Onipa and The Zongo Brigade, K.O.G. also managed to make waves far beyond the white cliffs of Dover. Among other things, he has shared the stage with artists such as Thundercat, Femi Kuti and Tony Allen, and performed at the celebration of Nelson Mandela’s hundreth birthday. When he finally releases an album under his own name, it’s in the form of a hyper-heavy hodgepodge of a record: From Afrobeat Fela Kuti style to Highlife à la Gyedu-Blay Ambolley and Ebo Taylor. Bob Marley is another important inspiration, as is Tupac Shakur. Choirs, balafon and distorted rap. Africa and Yorkshire swaying in harmony, the soil and the trees and the cosmos all grooving to the backbeat.
Kurdish and Turkish music merges with Nordic folk melodies in the songs of this young Danish group. AySay’s saz player and singer Luna Ersahin grew up in a Kurdish-Turkish-Danish family, and in her songwriting she mixes her influences freely, both in terms of language and musical composition. As an ensemble, AySay presents the songs in a tight kind of semi-electronic east-west folk jazz. AySay was formed when Luna Ersahin met Aske Døssing Bendixen (drums and percussion) at a music education in Copenhagen. Eventually, they found a guitarist in Carl West Hosbond, and bassist Jens Mikkel Madsen was added to the group’s live format. Somewhere along the way, Luna Ersahin also managed to live in Sweden for a period and study Swedish folk music – on the group’s debut album Su Akar, sounds from this side of the Öresund can be heard in the form of violin polska as well as kulning – a vocal technique stemming from an ancient herding call.
In the first episode ever of the Clandestino Podcast, we meet musician Sara Parkman, who talks about her work as co-curator for this year’s edition of Clandestino Festival. Sara gives us a brief introduction to the artists she selected for Hagakyrkan on June 7, when Clandestino arranges a “musical novella”, instead of the regular festival program. She also talks about her own experiences this spring, characterized by quarantine and canceled concerts. This podcast is in Swedish.
Musik i avsnittet Sara Parkman: Ing-Maries vals Ebo Krdum & Genuine Mezziga: Back in the Days Shida Shahabi: Futō Maria W Horn: Epistasis Sara Parkman: Vreden
