Peruvian duo Dengue Dengue Dengue named their 2018 EP Son de los Diablos after a traditional Afro-Peruvian dance whose name translates as “Sound of the Devils.” Their broader work has repeatedly connected Peruvian and Latin American rhythmic traditions with bass music, dub, techno and other forms of electronic production.
What interests me is what happens when a traditional form reaches the club without being treated as a museum object.
Electronic producers can easily sample an old recording, place a kick drum beneath it and call the result fusion. The more difficult approach is understanding which rhythmic or cultural characteristics can survive transformation.
Dengue Dengue Dengue work in that less obvious space.
The electronic system does not need to imitate the original instruments exactly. It can carry rhythmic memory through another set of machines.
Tradition then becomes neither untouched nor erased.
It behaves more like a source code that can run in another environment.
https://denguedenguedengue.bandcamp.com/album/son-de-los-diablos
