Kafundó Records returns with the third edition of their exceptional compilation series. This time around, the compilation opted to hone in on the north and northeastern region of Brazil, an area steeped in shifting expressions of Afrodescendent communities and Caribbean sounds.
The label dubs the sound a “transnational stew”– “Coco meets dancehall, forró meets dubstep, and brega meets moombahton. Carimbó with wobble bass, glitched out dub coco, Bahian hip-hop ragga, moombahton samba, to maracatu samba dub hip-hop, and frenetic punked out Frevotron.” The project is boundary-blurring by nature, and in embracing Afro-Brazilian identity and putting that marker at the forefront of the compilation, Kafundó reminds us that visibility is a mechanism for resistance.
Maga Bo and Wolfram Lange, the label’s founders, chose Kafundó as the project’s namesake because it translates as “an isolated or far away place.” As Bo said in a previous interview with Remezcla, “just like in nature, the most beautiful places are often times those that are the most difficult to get to, that give you the vantage point that you don’t have anywhere else.”
Kafundó is imagining futures, cities, street parties that embody these intersections, a like-minded re-envisioning that many are taking to the streets to claim for themselves in recent protests and ongoing campaigns in the country. Take the recent march in Brasilia that brought together several thousand Afro-Brazilian women to protest the “vulnerability and fragility” that more than 57 million Afro-Brazilian and mixed race women face in the country every day. Or the ongoing campaign lobbying for the inclusion of the word black on the 2020 census, while millions have embraced this identity for generations. Visibility is ultimately power, and Kafundó Records provides an ongoing vantage point toward claiming that.
In this exclusive, Kafundó shares “Uh La Lai” from Superlage out of Olinda, Pernambuc, made up of cumbia specialist DJ Incidental and bassist/singer Raimundo Alfai. It’s a slow, smoothed out carimbó dub cut with the flow of a live street session that invites you into the Kafundó sound system, wherever you imagine that to be.