You Are the Music: Buraka Som Sistema

Last Updated on Wednesday, 24 February 2010 17:06 Sunday, 24 January 2010 16:10

You Are the Music: Buraka Som Sistema "Kuduro is the new baile funk. No, check that; kuduro is the new kwaito. Or was that grime? Reggaetón, maybe? For a particular sort of cultural trainspotter, tracking down the newest strains of dance music from diverse parts of the world with the assiduousness of a modern-day Alan Lomax, this Angolan style is the current ne plus ultra. Built on the fundamentals of house music, with the chilly, playful textures of electro and early rave and faint echoes of the Caribbean, kuduro is full of coarse break beats and bass lines that vibrate just at the edge of collapse. It's lately gained traction in Europe, particularly in Portugal, which has a significant population of immigrants from Angola, a former Portuguese colony.