The history of music is not subordinate and hierarchical. It is, on the contrary, off-center, polymorphic and develops randomly. Starting from Hannah Elsisi’s conceptual postulate, a simple debate between friends: would Rosalía, a hyperstar of global pop, of European origin, have built her career on the cultural reappropriation of Afro-descendant rhythms? A seemingly simple discussion, also coupled with a legal case: the one which currently pits the Jamaican duo Steely & Clevie against the giants of the music industry – Warner, Universal or Sony.
To put it simply, according to the producer duo, their riddim Little Man Jam signed in 1989 would contain the original DNA of reggaetón. A major copyright infringement battle, since this rhythm is contained in the hundreds of hits that have been at the top of the world’s top albums for years. The track is seductive, everyone knows and feels that, in a certain way, “MIA” by Bad Bunny and Drake or « Taki Taki” by Dj Snake draws heavily on African polyrhythms: “ I find that this process is an interesting entry point to tackle the question of capitalism in music, that of the dynamics of circulation and appropriation of rhythms, but also of their capture by a white and colonial liberalism. This affair reveals how the Western question of copyright has generated an entire ecosystem, as well as a legislative system, in the service of a domination, that of a colonial and cultural capitalism, which eludes an entire continent and its diaspora » explains the British-Egyptian historian.
« My rhizome is a mangrove »
In contrast to this monstrous narrative, legislative and symbolic matrix, which stratifies and freezes musical creation, Hannah Elsisi opposes the Caribbean experience: a place of trauma, individual and collective suffering as well as uprooting, but also a place of crossings, encounters and hopes of being. Faced with the pyramidal and arborescent creative industries, strong in their hierarchies between roots, trunks and undeniable summits, Hannah Elsisi outlines the counter-model of a musical creation, hybrid, underground, mixed. A decolonial vision of the history of music, which resists and unfolds, in the insubordinate manner of a rhizome: “ the same rhizome developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaux specifies the intellectual. But my rhizome is a mangrove. »
Mangrovewhich is precisely the name of a research unit co-founded by Elsisi within New York University. A program that studies the languages, biotopes, sounds and aesthetics of migration. A vast project at the heart of which Hannah is developing Chromesthesia : « Chromesthesiaor how Afro-descendant music innervates, like a rhizome, contemporary creation. From Rio to Cairo, from Miami to Kampala, Chromesthesia probes a millennium of diasporas, following the soundscapes of migrations and creation in exilecomments Hannah. Dancehall, baile funk, amapiano, mahraganat, electro-shaabi, raptor house or reggaetón precisely, are international, contemporary and major genres, born from the chaos of the displacements of Afrodescendants due to wars, climate change, economic collapses, wars like slavery. »
An archive compilation for “unwritten stories »
Perennials, programs Mangrove et Chromesthesia have just taken shape at the end of 2024. First in the form of a nine-track compilation: released in November 2024, CHROMESTHESIA: The Color of Sound Vol. 1 brings together around twenty artists, from the different sound archipelagos conceptualized by Hannah Elsisi. An impressive compilation as an archive for “ stories that are not written. » To embody African memories that are prevented and sometimes prohibited, the intellectual summons the most illustrious ambassadors of a bass music demanding, internationalist and enlightened. It’s no surprise that this first part opens with the polyrhythms of Deena Abdelwahed, a Tunisian electronics engineer who constantly breaks up sound abstractions and creative territories in motion. Chromesthesia also includes in the cast the South African lyricist Sho Madjozi, lively queen of Limpopo, Pedro Elias Corro, alias DJ Baba the Raptor, absolute godfather of the much underestimated raptor house or 3Phaz, pillar of the Cairo electronic scene, who teams up for the opportunity alongside his comrade of Egyptian-Iranian origin KUKII. KUKII, who many know under her old nickname: LAFAWNDAH, neo digital diva who we’ll be talking to you about again very soon on PAM.
Hannah Elsisi’s nebula has also recently been discovered on stage: to celebrate the release of the impressive curation Chromesthesiathe historian operated in November 2024, on the stages of the Guess Who? in Utrecht a vast performance lasting thirteen hours. On the menu for his naked feast? A real take-over in the programming of the Dutch event with the gqom and amapiano sets of DJ Lag, the arrival of the godfather DJ Babatr, or the lives of 3Phaz x KUKII, Sho Madjozi or our beloved PÖ, obviously known to supporters of the Ugandan collective Nyege Nyege. All the choreographic direction of this exclusive and live version of the experience Chromesthesia was placed under the expert leadership of Exocé, a French performer of Congolese origin and a hybrid visual artist, also nourished by the lights of Africa: “ the experience of rhythm and polyrhythm is always collective » adds Hannah Elsisi. “ People have always gathered in a circle, in a group, to heal each other. The African continent as well as the diaspora carry this ancestral history of rhythm in its therapeutic function, this is also what Chromesthesia tells us. »
Chromesthesia: the Colour of Sound Vol. 1feat. Sho Madjozi, Nick León, Deena Abdelwahed, 3Phaz, LAFAWNDAH, DJ Babatr…
Artists, producers and musicians, would you like to participate in the second part of the Chromesthesia collection? Contact [email protected].
