Bugiganga Tropical: The Origin of the Vinyl Collection
Tropical Diaspora Records® began with this very project: Bugiganga Tropical, a 7-inch vinyl series whose name carries deep personal and colonial weight.
The Portuguese word "bugiganga" translates to trinket, gewgaw, or knick-knack—a term I often heard in the homes of the wealthy, where my Black grandmother worked as a domestic servant (empregada doméstica), one of many euphemisms for modern-day slavery in Brazil.
As a child, I accompanied her to those opulent apartments in São Paulo’s elite neighborhoods, where white employers dismissively referred to her belongings—her few, precious possessions—as "bugigangas."
This duality became the core of the collection: what colonizers deem worthless—trinkets, scraps, the labor and creations of the oppressed—are, in fact, sacred. The music, crafts, and raw materials extracted through slavery and exploitation hold the true value, far beyond what the powerful ever acknowledged.
Plants as Memory, Vinyl as Resistance
Each cover features plants—coffee, cacao, sugarcane—to honor the ancestors whose forced cultivation of these crops built the so-called "New World." Bugiganga Tropical Vol.1, with its coffee plant motif, ties the music’s Afro-South American rhythms directly to the land and labor from which they emerged.
This is more than a record series. It’s a reckoning with Abya Yala (the Guna people’s term for the Americas, meaning "land of vital blood"), where Indigenous and African resilience forged cultures that colonialism tried to erase.
The Vinyl as an Archive
The first four releases in our catalog are foundational. They trace the musical legacy of the transatlantic slave trade and Indigenous resistance. Vol. 1: Coffee (2015) – The brutal way of forced labor. The stimulant that fueled colonial exploitation. Vol. 2: Cacao (2018) – The stolen sweetness of Indigenous knowledge. The bitter seed of stolen Indigenous knowledge. Vol. 3: Sugar Cane (2020) – The sweet stalk that cut through generations of flesh. Vol. 4: Cotton (2025) – The final stitch in slavery’s fabric, now unraveled
A Call to Listen Deeply
This is more than music. It’s an act of remembrance, reclamation, and repair. We invite you to engage with these sounds, to sit with their stories, and to question the narratives you’ve been taught.
Play these records. Hear the past. Resist the silence.
Thank You
Djs Dr.Sócrates and Garrincha
Tropical Diaspora Records® 2025
