Son[i]a #270
DJ Riobamba
Ni de aquí ni de allá. First-generation Yankee daughter of an Ecuadorian mother and a Lithuanian father, in the DJ booth Sara Skolnick plays the sounds of the Latin diaspora, convinced of their power to generate community and soothe wounds that never fully heal due to systemic racism and classism. For DJ Riobamba, pleasure and partying are spaces of political resistance, and music is a key means for the self-representation and visibility of Latin culture, opening up the possibility of other narratives.
Now that reggaeton and dembow are a fixture of mainstream culture and summer playlists, legitimised by the whitewashing and cultural appropriation processes of the music industry, DJ Riobamba has turned to perreo and lives with the hyper-sexualised (and sexist) lyrics, totally at ease with the shift and ambiguity that takes place when a woman is in the booth.
We talk to Sara Skolnick about organising parties for almost ten years, about multiple identities, the traumas of migration, processes of assimilation, music, catharsis and activism, the queer space that opens up in the underground scene, her social intervention projects, the origins of dembow and reggaeton, Justin Bieber, y… toda esa vaina.
Marissa Malik
It’s tempting to describe Marissa Malik’s practice as a crossroads—one where music production intersects with mysticism, DJing and astrology. But the way she talks about these complementary aspects instead suggests that they are all on a sort of Möbius strip, a continuum with no beginning or end, on which they harmonically coexist and feed back on each other. This paradoxical geometry relies on a worldview and a critical gaze that has allowed Marissa to explore and put her own spin on the correlation between language, racial segregation and gender, especially in the framework of diaspora communities like her own. We sat down with Marissa Malik to talk about language, rituals, migration, mysticism, barriers, queerness and sexuality in her musical domain.
Aho Ssan
Aho Ssan is a French musician of Ivorian and Ghanaian descent who has been involved in graphic design and film works under his given name, Desiré Niamké. These practices, like his multiple identity, resonate in his music. In this podcast we talk to Aho Ssan about his grandfather’s lost trumpet and about an Ivory Coast jazz band that’s impossible to track down. Along the way, we share the cinematic tension of his debut LP Simulacrum and the various routes that led him there. Techno’s cultural appropriation, Black Bandcamp, and the glaring lack of representation of black artists in global electronica are part of the road he has travelled and the lessons learnt along the way.
Faka
Desire Marea and Fela Gucci talk about performing masculinity and self-policing, vulnerability, Siyakaka feminism, South African pop culture in the 90s, racialised queer bodies, music as a medium and dealing with contradictions.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with DJ Riobamba that we were unable to include the first time around.