Buraka Som Sistema

Buraka Som Sistema is an electronic dance music project from Portugal, specializing in a fusion of techno beats with the African zouk and kuduro genre. It is generally credited with creating the &zouk bass& and &progressive kuduro& variant  and has received an MTV European Music Award.
 
Buraka Som Sistema was founded in 2006 by João Barbosa (Li'l John), Rui Pité (DJ Riot), Andro Carvalho (Conductor) and Kalaf Ângelo.
 
Barbosa and Pité were producers from the Cool Train Crew collective, for which Kalaf was a frequent vocal collaborator. They were interested in creating a kuduro project, and had previously worked together as 1-UIK Project. They met Carvalho, a hip-hop producer from Angola and member of the hip-hop band Conjunto Ngonguenha, while he was in Portugal.
 
Buraka Som Sistema is the Portuguese word for word translation for Buraka Sound System, keeping the English word order (the correct translation would be &Sistema de Som da Buraka&). They took their name, Buraka, from the freguesia of Buraca in the city of Amadora, part of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area.
 
Their first release was From Buraka to the World, an EP released on the Portuguese label Enchufada, which include the single &Yah!&, featuring vocals from Angolan hip-hop MC Petty. It was followed by another Petty vocalized track, &Wawaba&, and a re-release of From Buraka to the World, expanded to a full album.
 
After touring in several European countries, including playing at the Glastonbury Festival and Roskilde Festival, the three producers released &Sound of Kuduro& in 2007, which features rapping by M.I.A., DJ Znobia, Saborosa and Puto Prata. The track was a precursor to their second album, Black Diamond, which was released in 2008 by Sony BMG, followed by a new single, &Kalemba (Wegue Wegue)&, with vocals by Pongolove.
 
Buraka Som Sistema‘s recent Boiler Room session sparked some serious intrigue from global bass heads worldwide for its “introduction” of Zouk Bass — a screwed, electronic take on 80s French Antillean zouk music popularized by Kassav. We asked Buraka member Kalaf to breakdown this genre mutation for us.
 
“We created it,” Kalaf responded via e-mail, “while recording Komba we were exploring other rhythms such as Zouk and Kizomba… When we were invited to play at the Boiler Room we had this idea to share more Lisbon sounds (beside kuduro) with the world. Since we like to twist things up we think “Zouk Bass” would be perfect name to label those beats.”
 
On their Enchufada label page, Buraka describe the genetic make-up of the genre in a post titled We Call It Zouk Bass: “By lowering the BPM and taking Zouk’s rhythms and melodies to meet the electronic and bass-heavy sounds of the UK underground a new genre was born.”
 
While BSS can certainly be credited for proliferating this new sub-genre and bringing it to a world stage, the track that inspired it all — and the first tune Buraka dropped on their Boiler Room set — was Deejay Kuimba‘s “Tarraxo Na Parede.” In an interview with Generation Bass, the Setubal (Portugal) based underground DJ/producer described the style of his track: “Zouk Bass for me it’s different than any other style but it is still based on “Tarraxinha” and “Kizomba” but totally different…. The idea is a dance style of music but leaning against the wall while dancing to it as u can imagine listening to that beat.”