I recently met Diplo in Berlin, while he was promoting his “Major Lazer” album for German media. German club culture magazine “Groove” features a full page on our meeting in their “Nimm Zwei” (”Take Two”) series. Here´s the translation:
Not far from the ambassador´s quarter in Berlin, two music ambassadors meet to exchange news and music. Names like Schlachthof Bronx or Justin Martin start to fly as Wesley Pentz, a.k.a. Diplo, 29, meets his colleague Daniel Haaksman, 40, boss of Man Recordings, to talk about the current state of Germany´s music scene. Satisfied, both conclude that the children of Kraftwerk open up their ears – and sample banks – to phenomenons such as Kuduro, Cumbia to Funk (Rio) to Funky (London). Haaksman lives in Berlin, Diplo is in town to talk about “Guns Dont´t Kill People, Lazers Do”, which he co-produced together with Switch.
Interview by Eric Mandel
Daniel, four years ago you invited Diplo to play at Berlin´s 103 club, and only a dozen people showed up. How would that be today?
DIPLO: Our small scene doesnt get much press. We are pretty much invisible, coz loads of things are based on file sharing. Daniel is here in Berlin, in England there´s Mumdance or Jammer, Crookers in Italy, Al-Haca in austria. We all do pretty much the same, an eclectic sound, we´ll never fit into one box. So we stay in contact, share music and support each other. The dub step guys don´t like Rusko and the old techno heads hate Crookers, because their tracks don´t peak after five minutes but after 45 seconds, haha. We are all pretty much fans of each other.
HAAKSMAN And this has reached a critical mass now. 2006 you could count the people involved in this scene on one hand. Now you have Crookers topping the pop charts worldwide, M.I.A. broke with “Paper Planes” and a new generation of club kids was raised on a sound that gives you an alternative to the ubiquious sound of house and techno played all night long. Those kids have an eclectic music taste, and this includes everything from rock, cumbia, reggaeton, ghettotec, whatever. Many of the elements that are relevant in techno – sound engineering, technology, long blends in mixing – are not relevant in this music. The idea of an spiritual expierence or states of trance on the dancefloor are not important for our audience, it´s all about pure energy. Styles like kuduro or baile funk inspired people like us with new ideas. Thus we became ambassadors which bring people from Brasil or Angola over here and put those people into contexts both in production and labels.
DIPLO It´s necessary, otherwise it´s just world music for older intellectuals. But it´s both ways: DJ Znobia from Angola recently sampled Switch. DJ Sandrinho samples Baltimore beats for his baile funk parties in Rio.
HAAAKSMAN Earlier, there was only very little musical exchange between Angola and BRasil. Now you have the anthem of Flamengo as a Kuduro remix from Angola. People can jump the artificial barriers today that the old media structures, the major labels or media company used to rule. Today, people can directly exchange ideas and music, and it´s all thanks to the internet.
DIPLO It´s kind of weird for me to see that Berlin is only getting it now, as Berlin is considered to be Electro-City. When I grew up in Miami I had this 2 Live Crew record, there was this track called “We Want Some Pussy (Live In Berlin)”, and it sounded as if they were playing in front of 20.000 people. I thought they were the biggest thing in Germany. I mean you guys had Kraftwerk, they invented the damn beat!
HAAKSMAN Yes, but here it went completely different ways. When Bambaataa used “Trans Europe Express” he created the electronic version of afro-american funk. In the U.S. this led to both Detroit techno and Miami bass. Electronic dance music in Germany wasnt very much influenced by “Planet Rock”, only when later, in it´s bastard child versions of Detroit techno or Chicago house. In Germany in contrary, e.g. DAF, was pretty straight and totally “white”. This preference has remained until today in large parts of the German dance music scene. There´s a few islands across Germany which follow afro-american music innovations, but the majority is completely self-centered. All the afro-american music innovations of recent years – bmore, chicago juke, etc. – werent registred over here. The same is for bubbling from Holland, which comes from a very vibrant black community.
DIPLO It´s great to mix with hard stuff, but by now it has become a no-word because for many years it has become really trendy. It´s a mix of Caribbean reggae and Dutch house, right in the middle.
You two have an ear for regional phenomenons. What is on your radar these days?
HAAKSMAN There´s hundreds of local dance music styles that are still to discovered. Tecno brega from Manaus for example. I´m currently into UK funky. Many of the UK funky guys come from Grime and they were fed of the clicheed strings and MCs. It´s sort of the UK answer to the breakbeat thunderstorm which poured over UK in recent years in forms of Kuduro, Soca, Baile Funk, Juke and Bmore.
DIPLO They want money, hehe! To be honest, I like UK funky, some of the instrumentals are great, like K.I.G.´s “Head, Shoulders, Kneez & Toez” has a good flow. But the majority of tracks sound to me like a cheap version of Bugz In The Attic. And when there´s “African” vocals, like (singing) “I play my conga”, then it sounds like the stuff my mother listens to when she visits a world music club night. At the same time it´s a mixed scene, with black and white kids, and that´s cool with me.
Read the original interview in German in Groove Magazine #119. Out now.
