Some things in life are bad / They can really make you mad / Other things just make you swear and curse. Constant venue closures, for example, or Newsnight.
However, we at Ten Tracks are not the types to sit around whinging – we prefer to look on the bright side of life. With that in mind, we’ve organised a frankly amazing event for our Easter Sunday event, Qabalala.
It features Rudi Zygaldo, Tokamak and Nope – as well as a turn from DJs from No Globe, a collective of music enthusiasts with eclectic tastes. We asked founder Joel to tell us more about clubbing without boundaries…
"No Globe is bunch of friends, artists, DJs and musicians. Some came through DIY Punk promotions, others through raving free-parties, a few graphics designers, sounds-system nuts, artists, anthropologists, animal lovers… quite a variety.
We started properly in December, with an amazing launch at Studio 24 Edinburgh bringing Super Guachin across from Buenos Aires, Argentina. They are on one of our favourite labels, Zizek, which releases the best digital-cumbia and dance around!
There’s a common misconception that world music is all Sandals, Peter Gabriel, Lift Music, Lofty Ethnomusicology… that it’s just African Folk music and Buena Vista Social Club. No Globe is about finding new ways of understanding and enjoying arts and music from across the world.
It started, as many things seem to, from a point of frustration at the ways conventional promotion of world music rests upon an ‘othering’ of peoples from different geographical locations, branding their artistic endeavours ‘exotic’, ‘traditional’ or ‘ethnic’ in opposition to some supposed norm, the ever slippery ‘us’.
One of our heroes, David Byrne, puts it well when he says, ‘world music is a way of dismissing artists or their music as irrelevant to one's own life. It's a way of relegating this "thing" into the realm of something exotic and therefore cute, weird but safe, because exotica is beautiful but irrelevant; they are, by definition, not like us.’
‘World Music’ is an irrelevant and problematic concept. But there’s plenty of interesting things to explore in terms of global culture, especially when artists from countries once branded ‘world’ by London-based PR companies are seizing the initiative to release and tour music on their own terms. To give up and retreat into the sounds we think of as ‘our own’ is just as bad as negating our own place within a hugely exciting global cultural exchange.
So with those somewhat convoluted and lofty premises: we want to be an outlet for new and interesting sounds and art, unconstrained by national borders, we want to bring this stuff to Edinburgh and have a party, we want to do this in a way that allows for discussion of internationalism, globalisation and capitalism, and we want to have a really good time along the way.
We’ve had some amazing luck in terms of leg ups and advice from some proper stallwarts of the scene, Chris Knight aka Astrojazz, Ed from the Third Door, Andy from Wonky, people who have been doing amazing independent club nights in this city for years and really know their shit. That might sound a bit sycophantic, but they have genuinely been really helpful and generous welcoming us into the small scene! We have a lot of students coming along and, especially with the lack of stuff for international people in this city there has been a great response.
Social media is integral for us, because we can sit down before a club and have access to an amazing array of music – the latest Azonto dance tune may have just gone up on SoundCloud, some Balkan DJs might have dropped a few bangers into our inbox, Cocobass or Comeme will have a new EP of incredible latin-electonica up for download etc. It’s amazing, almost overwhelming. Other than that I think it’s important not to overstate the use in terms of promotions, people still like well designed, printed flyers and posters… Facebook is still a useful but soul-destroying land of misery.
The gig at The Third Door is going to be amazing. Our pals from Yorkshire, Nope, are coming up to play some serious head-on-a-hinge krautrock sludge whilst Swank'n'Jams and Astroboy will no doubt play some serious heat. We’ll be bringing out the vinyl classics we’re never quite brave enough to play at big clubnights, so expect some seriously ace afropop, cumbia, middle-eastern dance… and absolutely no Paul Simon.
Probably."
Qabalala takes place at The Third Door (45-47 Lothian Street) on Sunday April 8 from 8pm – 3am.
Tickets are £5 in advance from Brown Paper Tickets or £7 on the door. For more info, see Facebook.
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