How was the first LusAfro meeting in Praia for you Dirk?

Well, I travelled to Cabo Verde together with Hans my partner from Africaine 808. And yes, it was very nice.

Since i’m a instrumentalist it was really amazing to work with all these musicians over there. It’s hard to find singers and musicians in Berlin with such an unbelievable technique and expression.

They were so quick and tight in the studio. You just give them an idea: I guess it was a recording-session in a hotel-room. We built a microphone-stand out of a lampshade, we installed the mic and recorded the people. Everybody pulled out their pens and they knew that this is going to be the take. They were like: „Ok, let’s do some chorus!“ or „we leave this and drop this“. I guess after 25 minutes everything was recorded and the session was finished. We all had a huge smile on our faces. This was great work. And the exchange was wonderful. Sure, also the possibility to be in Cabo Verde. 

„They just do music together and learn from each other.“

Any highlights?

Beside the recording sessions with the musicians in the studio, it was nice to drive into the hills of Praia and find yourself in a jam-session with the locals. I didn’t really knew how exactly to play certain percussion instruments. There were just 16-84 year old guys jamming and everybody was just so easy, telling me: „Try to play it like this or like that. But hey! all good!“. The music kept bumpin all the time. We were sitting in this place from eight in the evening till the police dropped us out of the place. They came and said it was to loud. It was somehow nice to be in that situation and to see that music can also be totally different to going to a music-school where you learn an instrument and all this procedure. They just do music together and learn from each other.

Check out Africaine 808s music from their 2016 album „Basar“