eMusic Review 0
21st-century club music has been repeatedly re-invigorated by the adoption of new rhythms from across the planet, whether that be Angolan kuduro, Brazilian baile funk, Mexican tribal guarachero or South African kwaito and house music. It feeds DJs' and dancers' insatiable appetite for fresh grooves, and it helps feed the feeling we all love to experience that there is something unifying about the dancefloor, a shared musical vocabulary that doesn't deny cultural difference as such, but which makes boundaries seem much more porous.
This instinct to encourage rhythm incursions goes back to the very birth of club culture as we know it, to the New York Loft parties of the early '70s where disco was born. Before disco became a genre in itself, it was simple shorthand for anything DJs wanted to play — from deep soul to Nu Yorican salsa, psychedelic rock to African jams. Indeed, the record often cited as the first ever true disco single is the "Soul Makossa" by the Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango.
It's to this moment in time and this attitude that Sofrito Tropical Disco, compiled by the London-based but avowedly internationalist Sofrito label and party collective, looks. Though there is music old and new here,… read more »
