Pan-Africanism Collection Höröyá on Vinyl

With the Tropical Diaspora® Records Pan-Africanism collection we celebrate our relationship with the band Grupo Höröyá. The purpose is to create a strong musical narrative about African and the African Diaspora living in Brazil nowadays. The same kind of people who are resisting against enslavement and colonization in the past so now more then ever. Music always was and is a way of resistance, a political and social instrument that can unify and uplift people of African ancestry world wide. We are committed to create a musical narrative about the people who crossed the Atlantic from Africa to the Americas, the encounter with the oringinary people and gave rise to cultural expressions that reflect both the horror and hope of that experience. Our language is music. We feel obliged to empower the people we work with by means of giving them the chance to control their own narrative.

The song Griot Xamã, the first song on our first compilation and  TROPICAL DIASPORA #1, consists of two read statements. It begins with a text of André Piruka, ccompanied by Griot Zal Sissokho playing Kora and ends with the speech of the Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa Yanomami. Höröya is an amazing band from São Paulo composed by Brazilian and African musicians from West Africa. It represents the acknowledgment of a recent Afro Diaspora that blends with Brazilian Afro traditions.

Two worlds are here re-united in the powerful drums (djembe, atabaque, dunduns, berimbau or cuica) and the Mandeng culture. The Afro Diaspora in São Paulo with a new generation of displaced Africans living in São Paulo the largest concrete jungle of South America, in Brazil the largest African population outside Africa. Höröya makes its contribution again in our first compilation with Mandin’Groove, an infecting song in which the West-African percussion takes over the dance-floor.

Following the tradition we started our new 7 inch collection Cities Of Diaspora with Höröyá again, a vinyl series featuring songs with strong narratives from the cities of the global south. Todo Lugar É Sertão featuring Chico Cesar and As Clarianas.