Maga Bo, the sonic traveller from Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, just came for a visit to Berlin to play at Club Transmediale, the digital media culture festival. His set was a fluent mix of Brazilian tunes, Baile Funk, Dubstep and Elektronic bits n pieces, all supoorted by his rapper MC Bnegao. Just before his great set I had the chance to do an interview and get some more insight about his travels, music and the “Funk Mundial” night in Berlin.
Right now there is a lot of global bass culture coming up and a lot of artists mix electronic music with traditional sounds from all over the globe. Is it true, that some artists start creating a similar sound, even though they live in different places, but that there is a connection anyhow?
Yes there is defenitely a conection. I don’t think it has to do with marketing really, or people start to do the mareting afterwards. Because there are festivals like the CTM and they get involved, and they want to frame it in a way that people can digest it or consume it. But as far as there is a connection between porducers and musicians has just evolved, it’s an organic thing. Just as the whole world music scene was twenty years ago, is a completely different thing. And they way it was marketed was different, the way it was performed and how it was transportable and moved aroud the world. Today it’s much more the punk rock DIY vibe. Everyone has access to a computer, even people in Mali and Nigeria, so if they really wanted to they can get a compyter. So now, we can put tracks on the internet and send it around the world, and things are copied and maluable. But right now is an exiting time for that…
Nowadays, it’s easy to download music and no one really buys CD’s anymore. That’s the problem that the music industry encounters. On the other hand you can connect travel easily, so is it a rather positiv thing for you?
It enables us to connect with booking people or filmakers, other musicians, or booker, just anybody that we wnat to anywhere in the world. Without email the way we are touring around the world it wouldn’t be possible. But in terms of selling music, no of us really make money of it. Non of us are getting rich, it allows us to travel, but you know, I’m a sound recordist, I do sounds for television and film and for example after Europe I go back to Brasil, and then I go back to Granada to make a documentary there and then have a stop-over in Trinidad, the flight is payed for. There are also times when I’m invited to play festivals in Australia or now in Berlin, so I can come here and show my work, and perform and collaborate. It’s allin betwine, because without a record out, nobody is gonna know what I do. It used to be that if someone brought out a record he could live on it, but even now if you sell 10.000 copies it’s not really enough to live on it, so you do performances and other things.
You playing together with Ghislain Poirier, Filastine, DJ Mujava and Radioclit together. So is it somehow special to you to play here or is it just another gig?
Yes, for me it’s really special, because Ghislain Poirier is gonna be here, my friend from Montreal, and Markus Wanstorn who I know from Cape Town is gonna be here, Filastine my long time friend and collaborator is gpnna be here, I don’t know DJ MUjjava yet, or Radioclit, I’m looking forward to meeting them. To see all those people in one place and do a show is awsome, and my MC Benegao is with me here, and it enabled us to do other shows in Amsterdam and Rotterdam and Paris, so it’s great to be here.
You travel a lot, because you also do documentaries and sound recordings. How much does it influence you and your music?
I think my music would be how it is without travelling, actually for sure, there is no question about that. Well, I don’t know, I have always lived this kind of nomadic existence, and even more nowadays, so … It”s funny that I’m saying this right nbow, because when I’m finishging this tour, I’m planning on staying at home, for four month, to only do Brasilian stuff. Which is kind of new for me because I’ve lived in Rio for 9 years, and I’ve done a lot of work ther, but I’ve never really released a lot of work there. So I really want to put something together from there.
How do you usually get in contact witht the artists you work with?
They all came along in different ways. I always had the curiosity to go to all those places I go to. I have some attraction to those places, I don’t always music in all the places I go to. But the places on this record (Archipelagoes – Soot Records 2007) where places I really wanted to go to and I wanted to get involved with this musical scene and communicate and connect on a musical level. My experience with South Africa was different as the one with Senegal, when I went there I was working on a documentary film and when I was finished with the film I wanted to connect with the hip hop community there. An so I stayed for anoter month and went to a lot of festivals and shows and just meeting people and if I liked somebody I said hey I like what you do let’s do something together. There where a lot of things that didn’t work for whatever reason but there were things that did work, there were some that worked better than others. It was the same in Morrocco, so when I went there I went to festivals and shows and introduced myself to the people. So some wree more successfull than others, and it came out like that on th erecord. I’ve been in to Zanzibar in 1995 and always wanted to go back there, aI also spent a lot of time in Kenia learning Swahili, and so the opportunity to do a documentary in Zanzibar came up and so I did the documentary for three weeks and then stayed three month, just working on music. And I was really interested in the whole orchestra tradition, because I love Egyption orchestral music and that’s really present Zanzibarian music, So I wanted to do something with that stuff and hook up with poeple, but also to do some electronic stuff and meet the Bongo Flava people and all that. To see the hip hop and ragga scene and combine all that, that was my idea.
Is electronic music also a good way to combine all those different style, or would it be possible without electronic music too?
People have been doing that for the history of men, I think. Synchronism, exchanging ideas and this exchange of ideas and styles of music is something that has been going on for years. The only thing that changed is the speed in which that happens and the distance over which that happens…Electronic music is just a kind of way of making sound, when they invented the electric guitarre, and now we are just carrying the musical tradition…
In this way we carry on the tradition, be it in clubs, on the street or on the internet. Thanks a lot for the chat and good luck for the future!
