Azonto Soca in Your Area

It’s Carnival time again! Besides being one of my favorite annual excuses to party (although I usually partake in August, as I’m usually stuck in the northern cold at this time of year), it always gives me an excuse to catch up on the musical output of many of my favorite scenes from around the Atlantic world.

Yesterday, when listening to a new soca mix from Hamburg-based DJ duo So Shifty, I couldn’t help but get (over)excited about some of the connections I heard being made between Africa and the Caribbean. The first song that immediately stood out was Chuku Chuku by Denise Belfon, which interpolates “Ashawo,” a continental smash by Nigeria’s Flavour. His version was already being covered on the continent in places as far removed as Benin, Ethiopia, and Zambia:

Flavour’s original version of “Ashawo”was meant to pay homage to and reinvigorate the highlife styles that had lost out to the more Hip Hop and Dancehall inflected styles that had become popular starting in the 1990′s.

However in the end Dancehall won out:

The original Nigerian version was written by Rex Lawson, whose own version was a continental smash itself, covered by many of his international contemporaries.

The legacy of “The Peanut Vendor” continues to make it perhaps the world’s most influential composition. Afropop did a great audio documentary on the legacy of the Cuban original, and its mark on popular music.

That’s all exciting in its own right, but it wasn’t what excited me most about So Shifty’s mix. The song that deserves that distinction is one by Olatunji Yearwood (shout out the Nigerian OG). This is the tune that caused me to proclaim via Twitter the arrival of Azonto Soca:

To me, besides the clear rhythmic similarities of the Stag Riddim to Azonto, Olatunji is clearly channeling the singing styles of Ghanaian and Nigerian pop singers, making the connections explicit.

I’ve been aware for some years that contemporary Afropop styles were becoming popular in Caribbean scenes. Decale Gwada or Madinina Kuduro show how connected the French Caribbean islands are to the Francophone capital, and some of those explorations have crossed over into the smaller neighboring islands. In the past I’ve even heard Kuduro tunes played at house parties during Brooklyn’s West Indian day parade. During last year’s Labor Day festivities in Brooklyn, I had to have a laugh when at a Soca fete at an auto shop in East New York, the DJ threw on Puerto Rican Don Omar’s cover of a Portuguese singer’s misappropriation of an Angolan dance style, and gave a massive shout out to Venezuela.

But these incarnations for me are outliers, often intrepid explorations into the outer realms of the African electronic diaspora by experimenters or progressive-minded DJs – or maybe just quirky fads. The arrival of the influence of Afropop styles on the Soca mainstream didn’t become clear to me until this January when while I was DJing, one of New York’s biggest Soca DJs, Dlife, approached me to talk about the Afrobeats tunes I was playing. It was then when he told me about Machel Montano’s Carnival remix of Timaya’s “Shake Yuh Bum Bum”:

I imagine my Sierra Leonean father and his friends, who used to take me to the Caribana Fesitval in Toronto as a child, would be quite tickled if they attended the celebration this year. You have to understand, for decades Africans have been consuming Caribbean music, merging our musical cultures with theirs. In Sierra Leone especially, Calypso-influenced styles such as Palmwine are part of our national heritage. Because of this, and because of my experiences going to Carnival-like celebrations in North America, I’ve always felt that Anglophone Caribbean culture from places like Jamaican and Trinidad was part of my own cultural heritage. For me it is a great source of pride to see some explicitly African contributions coming to the fore in Dancehall and Soca circles. Every year, amongst the roll call of Caribbean nation flags waving on Eastern Parkway, every once in a while you might see a Ghanaian or Nigerian one. This year they might wave just a little higher!

After a couple of initial tweets, the great Wayne and Wax chimed in, and asked my why I heard the songs as Azonto. We had a quick exchange where we discussed the rhythmic breakdown that identify it as Azonto or not, and Sidhartha called us nerds. Alexis Stephens chimed in with Busy Signal’s version of U Go Kill Me, and pointed out the connections that DJs in London like Hipsters Don’t Dance are making in their work. So Shifty responded with Yung Image’s cover of P Square on the Alingo Riddim, and Iswayski submitted a mix by Brooklyn-based Guyanese DJ Speedydon. Erin MacLeod loved it, and overall grand time was had by all.

Later in the night, as almost if to settle the issue @RishiBonneville submitted this video from St. Vincent:

Tempering my excitement for a resurgence of some kind of 21st Century Pan-Africanism, it tells me more a story of a unitary global cultural pop ascending. This global pop rides the waves of neoliberalism, and aspirational cultural output. However, it also accompanies the increased phenomenon of South South connections, albeit mediated often via immigrant populations in Northern capitals – but also new economic relationships, and the Internet. The fact is this is more proof we’re living in a hyper-connected world in which the differences between Rio, Port of Spain, Accra, London, and New York are melting away to reveal one giant mega city…inside of which the divisions between classes may tell us more about international society than national borders. It’s also doing crazy things to culture.

However, let’s not dwell on the dark side of globalization too much, after all this is Carnival! The only time in many former-slave/colonial societies that racial, class, and cultural barriers are temporarily lifted in the service of universal revelry. So go ahead, dive into Azonto Soca, and imagine the possibilities of our new world!

Top image by Blaine Harrington.