In Angolan culture, the celebration of life is strongest at death.
This ritual is called komba and it takes place seven days after a corpse has been buried. Instead of shedding tears of sorrow, the deceased's friends and family dance wildly into the night, drinking heavily and eating the dead one's favorite food.
But in the music world, Komba is the clever name of Portuguese electro crew Buraka Som Sistema's latest record.
"The Buraka sound is a mix of electronic ghetto genres, from reggaeton to moombahton, kizomba to grime, dirty south to dubstep," the crew said during an interview with Red Bull late last year. "We're just electronic music producers making whatever comes to our mind, we don't get stuck on any genre."
On Komba, for example, layers of Euro-house and African rhythm are stacked on top of one another, all the while leaving enough room for poppy EDM bleep-boops and weeble-wobbles.
It's that very complexity that earned Komba an editor's pick from the Washington Post, which cited the band's "synthesizer burbling, party chants, and video-game-like sound effects."
"Buraka Som Sistema has translated [the kuduro progressivo genre] into seven top-40 singles in Portugal, and that success has forced the group to evolve from studio- and club-based beat makers into a real band that can play big festivals."
Of course, though, Buraka's just as good at mid-size music venues like Grand Central.
Buraka Som Sistema. Thursday, August 9. Grand Central, 697 N, Miami Ave., Miami. The show starts at 10 p.m. and tickets cost $20 plus fees via fla.vor.us. Ages 18 and up. Call 305-377-2277 or visit grandcentralmiami.com.
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