Various - Chromesthesia: The Colour Of Sound Vol. 1

Rocket - CHROMES001

From Rio to Cairo, Miami to Kampala - Chromesthesia probes the audiopolitics of diaspora, tracking soundscapes of errantry and migration along the isles of The Global Mangrove Archipelago. This world pulses with sound. Dancehall and Baile Funk, Amapiano to Dembow, Mahragan and Raptor House, Jizan to Jazz - these sounds, forged through intergenerational exchange and displacement, define the global rhythms of our time.

Brainchild of British-Egyptian historian, Hannah Elsisi, Chromesthesia-aptly named "the colour of sound"- tracks afro-diasporic rhythms from The Whole Mangrove World. In its first of more-to-come iterations, special research projects and commissions, Chromesthesia launches its inaugural compilation mapping centuries of movement, resistance, and creolite that undergird global electronic music today. Featuring a veritable avengers team of everyone's favourite producer: Sho Madjozi, Asher Gamedze, Nick León, Deena Abdelwahed, Kelman Duran, GAIKA, Lord Tusk, Covco, Julmud, LYZZA, Maurice Louca, Baby Cocada, 3Phaz, LAFAWNDAH, Double Zuksh, Lamin Fofana, DJ Babatr.

Any look at the musical charts of the last two decades reveals the music of the world today to be: Afrobeat, Dancehall, Baile Funk, Cumbia, Reggaeton, Shatta (forged in intergenerational interactions between Central and West-African rhythms used by enslaved populations to communicate with each other in the mangrove forests of the Caribbean and South America, before later migratory movements, both forced and voluntary, transported these sounds back across the shorelines of the Mexican Gulf to North America); Mahragan "Electro-Shaabi") and Arabic Trap-Bow (forged in intergenerational interactions between afro-islamic musicking rituals of North and East Africa and the Gulf: Bahri, Gnawa, Singeli, Zar); and the hip-hop, drill, grims, punk and noise of the world's colonial metropoli.

From the Mexican to the Persian Gulf, the Atlantic to the Med, the global rhythms of our times archive over a millennium of African and afro-descendant musicking on the move. In reprising the interaction of longue-durée African migratory patterns with more recent movements of migration across these bodies of water, Chromesthesia centres the sonic and sensory rites (rituals of song, dance, music and performance) in which racialised labour groups have forged an imagined sense of local and global community. The popular music of the twenty-first century is virtually impossible without shared global experiences of migration and displacement due to war, climate change, economic collapse, and gender violence, among other factors. In other words, 'the hit parade' is shot through with power. Who controls these sounds? How does music intersect with rights? What does belonging mean in our globalised soundscape?

Chromesthesia tracks the perduring exercise of sonic rights by enclosed communities everywhere: the right to sing, dance and play. Elsisi flips the script on politics through a sonic lens: "Chromesthesia investigates politics as the power to be heard - to sing this song, to bang that beat - as it chafes against the right to be heard - the legislation of acceptable and hegemonic speech. The two, often, do not go hand in hand: cultural enfranchisement has not always translated into political representation. But precisely because music needs no permission, it can sound the horn of liberation. Music, then, is an archive of political power, expressed otherwise. Sitting with that sonic archive it becomes possible to make audible what written history has silenced: joy in community crying out from the deepest of enclosures; immense power as against impossible violence. The rhythms of the mangrove world are held out to be blasted out LOUD."

Side A:
Deena Abdelwahed, Nick León, Julmud - Mangrove 04:04
Nick León, Baby Cocada, Kelman Duran - Eternidad 02:17
3Phaz, Lafawndah, KUKII - Tootsie's 03:54
Sho Madjozi, Double Zuksh, Zuksh, Young Zuksh - Zamaleky 03:34
Dj Babatr, Oshazs - Aje (Me llama la calle) feat. Oshazs 03:10

Side B:
Dj Babatr, LYZZA - Sucio 02:26
Gaika, Cõvco, Lord Tusk - Time On 04:20
Maurice Louca, Kelman Duran, Asher Gamedze - Dark Out feat. Hannah Elsisi 06:52
Lamin Fofana - Infinite:Regress Into Futures Past 03:30

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