Don’t miss this rare London performance Tuesday 14th Jan, 8.30pm at Rich Mix London. Alt has partnered with the London Short Film Festival to offer you two free tickets to the event.
“I see music in colours, I have synesthesia, so whatever I do I see colours and atmosphere. It’s obsessive.” – Baloji
Belgian-Congolese musician Baloji fronts the five-piece L’orchestre de la Katuba, performing live alongside a programme of his genre-bending music videos.
A multiform artist also working with film, the performance will be preceded by a programme of his genre-bending short works. A performer in perpetual motion, his moving image and on-stage presence are a collision of intimate vitality and politically empowering intensity.
Who is Baloji_
Baloji is an artist in motion, a musician, poet, film director, a man of images and ideas.
He’s in motion like the inhabitants of Avenue Kaniama in Lubumbashi. In motion like the synthetic afro beats he produces, the fruit of an unlikely alliance between rockrumba and futurist funk. In perpetual motion, like his limbs on stage as he fronts the Kaniama Show band, leading them in a sensual voodoo trance.
In motion like the era captured by his pen, an era where the intimate and the political come together and clash. 137 Avenue Kaniama is Baloji’s third album and the first to appear on the Bella Union label (John Grant, Fleet Foxes, Beach House…).
Baloji means “man of science” in Swahili, but during the colonial period, that meaning shifted as a result of Christian evangelisation, to signify “man of the occult sciences” and then “sorcerer”.
Baloji was born in Lubumbashi (DRC Congo) and grew up in Belgium. As a teenager, he started his first rap collective, Starflam. In 2008, as Baloji, he released “Hotel Impala” an album conceived as a reply to a letter he received from his mother after a 25-year absence.
As part of our SheCAN initiative to offer opportunities to women to experience the arts this competition is open to women of colour only and underrepresented women. To win answer the following question: Where was Baloji born and what is the name of his 2008 album? All answers must be in by close of business on 12 January 2020. Email: editor @ alt – africa . com
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