DJ Mukambo launches new party concept Festa Mukambo

For the past few years, Benjamin Tollet alias Mukambo has been making Brussels sweat to his Afro grooves. Until recently, he organised the Groovalicious party concept, but he is now launching Festa Mukambo at Bazaar and Afro-Groove Sessions at the Vk*. “I don’t need musique carrée to dance.”

"It was never actually my intention to become a DJ,” Benjamin Tollet tells us in the colourful courtyard of Itinéraires AMO in Sint-Gillis/Saint-Gilles, a place where he often comes to scale the climbing walls. Tollet has been promoting the best world music in our magazine for more than a decade, but he is now making a name for himself as a DJ. “I enjoy writing about music, but I wanted people to be able to hear that music too.”

Jan Smeets, the former concert programming director at the Vk*, occasionally asked for his advice when booking world music bands. “In 2011 he invited me to play at their New Year’s party. I hadn’t done any DJ-ing since I was sixteen. But it was a success, and everyone started dancing."

"Three months later, I started producing radio under the stage name Mukambo. I managed to do a podcast on Groovalizacion, an internet radio station that had been founded two years earlier by a French Moroccan and a Spaniard. I dived in head first. And thanks to the radio, people increasingly started inviting me to DJ. That got the ball rolling.”

His Groovalicious party concept became more and more popular, but it has now been renamed Festa Mukambo. “I started Groovalicious four and a half years ago, along with (the Brussels philosopher, activist, and documentary filmmaker) Bleri Lleshi,” Benjamin Tollet says. “He had been a DJ ten years earlier, playing jungle. For Groovalicious he would perform as Bruselo, while I was Mukambo. They were great parties, but eventually our collaboration became difficult so we decided to go our separate ways.”

Festa Mukambo now has a more explicit link with his radio show, Radio Mukambo, online and every Monday evening on BRUZZ. The name has changed, but the concept hasn’t. “No, it is still basically the same. We start off with a dance workshop, and then it’s time to party. I am now based at Bazaar in the Marolles. Groovalicious was initially based at La Tentation, and afterwards at La Tricoterie."

"It’s hard to find a good spot in Brussels, there are not many places where you can have a party until five in the morning. Bazaar is a beautiful venue, but it is more of a club. My goal is to get people clubbing to Afro grooves, rather than only to electro or pop. Rebel Up! does something similar, but otherwise it is simply non-existent in Brussels, despite the fact that this city has an incredibly multicultural audience who love going to parties like that.”

Originally, Tollet concentrated on “global grooves”, to distinguish it from “global bass”. “On the one hand, in world music, you have very traditional music, and on the other end of the spectrum, you have a very modern variation of that music that is electronic and often has a house beat. There are parties, events, and radio shows for each type, but there is nothing for the kind of music in between those, the music that I play: world music with a danceable groove."

"It was my original goal to play grooves from all over the world, but because all my music comes from Africa and the diaspora, I stuck to the term “Afro grooves”. I add in some Arabian music, but nothing European or far-Eastern. I actually have two main genres, Afrobeat and Afro-Brazilian. That includes soukous, Ethio-jazz, Afro-luso – music from Angola and Cape Verde – and Afro-Latino music from Colombia and Peru, as well as reggae, dub, and dancehall.”

Because “DJ Benjamin Tollet” does not sound very exotic, he decided to use a stage name that evokes the South a little more. “Mukambo is actually an alternative spelling of the Portuguese word mocambo, which is a synonym of quilombo. That was the name of Brazilian communities founded by slaves who fought their way to freedom, often ending up in the hills or forests. They were like free states, but the people who lived there were in constant combat with the Portuguese to maintain their freedom."

"One of the biggest and most famous was the Quilombo dos Palmares, in Pernambuco, which was independent for 150 years. It was not only a community of former slaves, but also members of native tribes and people who had been ostracised from society for some reason, both white and mestizo people. They had their own rules and lived in harmony with nature. To me, Mukambo is the place where people can liberate themselves from commercial music, from pop, rock, and electro."

It almost seems like an actual place.
BENJAMIN TOLLET: I sometimes call it Mukambistan as a joke – my version of Kalakuta Republic, the name that Fela Kuti gave the compound in Lagos where he had founded his own “republic” and declared independence from the Nigerian government. Mukambo is my safe haven.

Do people call you Mukambo?
TOLLET: Sometimes, which I think is very funny. They are often people that I have never met before. My mother always wanted me to have a “normal” job, but whenever I am in the city with her, she is very proud every time people call me “Mukambo”.

Did she imbue you with your love for world music?
TOLLET: My parents lived in Brazil from 1972 until 1976, so that my father could escape his military service. He opted to do two years of development cooperation instead, but in the end they stayed for four years. That was before I was born, but my father never stopped listening to bossa nova. Vinicius de Moraes, that kind of thing. I could sing along to it, but I didn’t understand a word of it because I didn’t speak Portuguese yet. As a teenager, I listened to metal and went to metal festivals.

I trained to be a journalist and I was an activist for Greenpeace; I was very idealistic. I thought that I would be able to write about politics freely. But it didn’t really turn out that way. In 2005, you invited me to write for AGENDA magazine. I started with roots reggae, but the story of the philosophy behind it didn’t take long to tell. So I started looking for people who made good music and who could tell an interesting story about their country and culture.

Toumani Diabaté opened that door for me. I had never heard of the kora, an instrument that is actually the origin of our harp; I discovered the balafon, the original piano, the ngoni, the African guitar. I discovered fantastic music that was extremely complex but had no notes. Telling Diabaté’s story was incredibly intriguing. It gave you a very different sense of Africa that was not all misery.

On your SoundCloud, you refer to yourself as a global grooves activist.
TOLLET: That is because I think the media still pay far too little attention to non-Western music and because not enough of that music is played on the radio or on the dance floor.

It seems to be on the up, though. People like LeFtO increasingly play world music along with their beats.
TOLLET: True. LeFtO was one of the first DJs in Belgium to incorporate world music in his sets. That happens increasingly often, although it is often limited to global bass. It is not easy to mix world music because it has very little binary music, it has no set beats in the way hip hop, dancehall, or house do, but LeFtO is technically skilled enough to glue two songs together seamlessly anyway.

In the future, I would like to focus on making remixes, but without the banal house beat. Afro-beat is really all about the bass line and percussion. The music doesn’t really stick to the tempo, so the groove “hovers”, making the music much more danceable. If you were to stick a binary beat under it, you would actually destroy the music.

In Brazil, I learned how to play maracatu, so that I could participate in the carnival in Recife. It is a traditional African rhythm that you can also play electronically. The beat has counter-tempos, it is electronic and dance floor-friendly, but it is not house. You see, I don’t need musique carrée to dance.

You also call yourself a mestizo.
TOLLET: That is a joke, because I am half Flemish and half French-speaking Bruxellois, so half northern-European and half southern-European. However you look at it, those cultures are very different. My father is a real Latino, relaxed, very warm, and will easily give you an abrazo. My mother is Flemish, she’s all about hard work and a strict education. Mediterranean culture and Northern culture collide in Brussels, and that is one of the things that makes the city so interesting.

You know a lot about the South, you have travelled across South America, stayed in Angola and Congo, and spend every winter in Brazil.
TOLLET: I was in Angola and Congo to check out the local music scene. That is very useful, because we keep in contact and they send me their new albums. Ninety percent of what I play is new music, by the way. I definitely want to go back to Africa. And the Belgian winters...they are just too harsh. [Laughs]

Besides all of this, you are also a guide at Brukselbinnenstebuiten and Pro Velo, you manage the band Terrakota, and you will soon be organising Mukambo’s Afro-Groove Sessions at the Vk*.
TOLLET: I have been trying to do the latter for a long time. But again, there are very few venues for these kinds of bands. I invite a few different bands to come over every month. The next edition will feature London Afrobeat Collective as part of Felabration, a concept that was founded by Fela Kuti’s daughter Yeni Kuti a year after he died. It started in Lagos, but then moved to other cities right across the world.

Felabration is supposed to be organised by a band, but there are no big Afrobeat bands in Brussels. So I just decided to organise it by myself.

You are wearing a Fela Kuti shirt. Do you think he is the greatest African musician?
TOLLET: No. He is the greatest musician, full stop. [Laughs] He had everything. Incredibly danceable music and a strong political message. Which, unfortunately, is still just as relevant today as it always was.

> Festa Mukambo #00. 25/08, 22.00, Bazaar, Brussels
> Mukambo's Afro-Groove Sessions: London Afrobeat Collective. 14/10, 19.30, Vk*, Sint-Jans-Molenbeek
> Radio Mukambo. Every Monday at 22.00 on BRUZZ (98.8)