The 7 inch Plants collection

This record collection with special cover designs is based on Tropical Diaspora® Records principles. We create a narrative about the encounter of two groups of people the first one that crossed the Atlantic from Africa to the Americas and the second one the Native people. This rendezvous gave rise to different cultural expressions that reflect both the horror and hope of that experience.

At the time Tropical Diaspora® was established as a company, the first four numbers in our catalog was already reserved for that what should be the foot print our commitments as music company and immigrants in Europe. Our first four releases on vinyl is a collection using an organic motive, plants related to the pueblos originarios i.e Native people and the kidnapped enslaved Africans.

The colonial civilizations in the so called American continents were built on their shoulders between many genocides caused by the colonial invaders that have killed millions in the past and continue to kill nowadays as constitutional states. In the case of the Native people reducing the populations to nearly extinction.

The plants in the cover-art should help the beholder to remember the ancestors of the Native and African people that are the foundation of the culture and identity of the Americas actually the Abya Yala, the name used by the Native nation Guna  which in the Guna language means land in its full maturity or land of vital blood.

For us the connection to the cultural and in our case musical legacy is direct related to the transatlantic slave trade movements from mainland Africa. For example our first records Bugiganga Tropical Vol.1 with the coffee plant remember us the kind of work Africans did in many regions in South-America, the same regions from where the music and rhythms we have in our records came from. The same music was created trough the interaction between Africans and or Europeans and or Natives.

The graphic design our concept is a work by the designer Matthias Beck from Estudio Rosebud based in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The Bugiganga Tropical Vol.2 with the Cacao cover was hand made using an Original Heildelberg print machine from the 50ties. Responsible for this work is Harald Weller in Berlin. The Bugiganga Vol.2 featuring Forró remember us about one of the largest sugar cane plantation regions in the world.

We hope you will enjoy this records as we do!