Transplanted to Poland after passing through Angola, Kenyan artist Slikback, whose real name is Freddy Mwaura Njau, generated a wave of synthetic percussion on Saturday, accompanied by visionary specters and warrior spirits. To describe this approach as frenetic, undoubtedly my favorite on the Nocturne 4 program (Saturday night to Sunday), is an understatement.
Fired off at extreme tempos, this barrage of beats had no other effect than to propel the audience, already feverish with Saturday night fever, into a sea of fire. Each as abrasive as the next, Slikback’s electroacoustic interludes connect bursts of distinct rhythmic sequences of extraordinary density.
The polyrhythms featured in the program are nothing exotic, and any facile references to Africa are excluded from the outset: violent noise, paramilitary evocations, tensions and explosions à la Ben Frost (who created documentary music at the heart of conflicts in interlacustrine Africa), sounds typical of the electronic lexicon… We can discern fragments of trap, footwork, jungle, drum & bass, techno, and more… The sequences on the program draw us into an irresistible maelstrom, jolting us as soon as we feel comfortable and pushing us into the next scene. What a punch!
Emotional radicalism and the formal search for this signature lead us to discover the African continent as it is today in its urban areas, far beyond its pop culture. The guy is where Westerners don’t expect him to be, at least not yet. We are not dealing with some predictable extrapolation of trendy Afrobeats and Amapiano (all of which are cool, mind you). And yet, here we are in digital Africa, with an authentic contribution on an international level.
