N°122 DA WEASEL - DIALECTOS DA TERNURA

I’ll make it easy for me and stay in Portugal as the link and I’ll also stick a bit with the genre. Da Weasel was formed by MC Pacman and MC Virgul in 1993. The band seized to exist only recently in 2010 without any explanation. Too bad you might say since Da Weasel had a very good live act with a complete band on stage.

It all started in 1993 when they released a first EP named ‘More than 30 Motherfuckers’. An Ep which set the tone for the rest of their career. Although releasing this EP in English, the first full album carried a Portuguese title and all tracks were also in Portuguese. If I say that they sought their inspiration with Cypress Hill and Public Enemy you can imagine the tone of the full album.

Only in 1997 Virgul joined Da Weasel to replace Yen Sung who went full time solo as a DJ. Virgul added ska and reggae to the band’s sound. This sound influenced the EP 3^° Capitulo in a certain way and Da Weasel changed styles a bit.

After recording their fourth studio album (which has a very difficult title to write down) they were asked to do the warm up for the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their Portuguese stop on their Californication tour. After this memorable moment for the band a few more left and joined Da Weasel only to leave MC Pacman and Virgul as a security. In 2004 they even changed producers and the following album was a great commercial success. Re-Definitions made platinum in Portugal and the band again decided to go on tour through Europe and Brazil in 2005.

They managed to release one more album and again it reached platinum within days. Amor, Escarnio e Maldizir would be their last album ever since they’d split up two years after. Maybe because Pacman and Virgul didn’t want to cooperate with each other no more, maybe because of other reasons. We’ll probably never know.

N°121 BURAKA SOM SISTEMA - HANGOVER

It was actually quite hard to link the Balthazar song or band so I types in Balthazar in google and came up with an American beer brand. And what does beer sometimes give you? A hangover off course so here we go with Hangover from Buraka Som Sistema.

BSS is a Portuguese dance project performing a style called progressive kuduro. Kuduro is actually an Angolan dance and music style, born out of mixing different traditional African carnival music. Since Angola used to be a Portuguese colony its logic the music also reach the European mainland.

The formation of Buraka Som Sistema was founded in 2006 by a few DJ’s and rappers. I’ll name their nicknames: Li’l John, Conductor and DJ Riot. The only one performing under his own name is Kalaf Angelo. Conductor is an African hip hop producer and met the others as the band Cool Train Crew while touring in Portugal. They were all looking to create a kuduro collective and this is how their collaboration started out.

Their first two singles led to a first full album in 2007 named From Buraka To The World. Buraca is actually a parish in the city of Amadora, north of Lissabon. That same year after touring BSS found help with a few excellent performers such as M.I.A. for the single ‘Sound Of Buraka’ and Pongolove for the single ‘Kalemba’. Both songs can be found on their second album Black Diamond.

Until 2010 they performed at different European festivals mostly situated in the class of world music festivals but in 2011 their break through with a bigger audience happens with the release of their third, yet most successful album Komba. Their hit single ‘Hangover’ reached high in the charts in most European countries.

I did choose the Hangover single since It’s their biggest hit in the whole of Europe. So grab some alcohol, bottom’s up, and get ready for a little party with this Portuguese sound system (som sistema)?