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Kenyan Producer Slikback Kicks Off China/Africa Underground Music Exchange

Conversations about the intersection between China and East Africa tend to focus on the former’s infrastructure building projects in the latter, which are described as a “big boost,” “one of the best things that has happened” in the region, or a “vastly overpriced” “debt trap”, depending on who you ask. But beneath the surface of high-level geopolitical hand-wringing, a few underground cultural strands have attracted mutual interest between artists from both regions, and are set to solidify with a groundbreaking new residency program kicking off in China this week.

Though he’s never been to China before, the Kampala, Uganda-based producer Slikback has already made virtual connections with some artists to come out of Shanghai’s vibrant underground club music zeitgeist, including Hyph11e and Tzusing. The Nairobi-born producer has only been making music for 2 years, but a live recording from a set he gave at last year’s Unsound Festival in Poland blew the lid off the founder of Shanghai label SVBKVLT, who immediately went about finding a way to plug Slikback’s jagged, indescribably vital cocktail of global sonic influences in with the similarly experimental edginess of the Shanghai scene.

“Around that time I’d been kinda bored of new electronic music, was looking for something fresh, and this was it,” says SVBKVLT. After some email back-and-forth that connected the dots between Slikback and Nyege Nyege, a Ugandan label/collective/festival that sent Kampala producer Kampire on a brief China tour last year, plans were made to bring Slikback to China as a spearhead project that will lead to a handful of Chinese producers heading to Uganda later in the year to record and perform.

“Slikback’s productions are really varied, incorporating a lot of different styles, as well as his own unique sound, so I think there are a lot of artists [in China] he could collaborate with,” remarks Gaz from SVBKVLT, who is holding down the China side of this fledgling cultural exchange conduit. “In Shanghai he will get some time with Hyph11e and Osheyack, in Nanjing we will stay an extra night for him to meet up with Dirty K, and in Beijing I hope we get some time with Howie Lee.”

On the other end of the parabola, a few key members of Uganda’s vibrant underground music scene are preparing to host Chinese artists later this year. One trip will be a mirror image of Slikback’s China residency, inviting a Chinese artist to spend quality time in the studio of the 10-month-old, Nyege Nyege-affiliated label Hakuna Kulala. And in Fall, SVBKVLT will facilitate the appearance of a few artists from China at the annual Nyege Nyege Festival, and prepare a few more China tours for artists from the Ugandan side of the equation. The nebulous but strongly felt short-term endgame for these initial forays is to create a revolving door of genre-breaking new musical ideas between two geographically distant, yet philosophically resonant pockets of creativity.

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“The topic could be really interesting, as Chinese investment is huge on the African continent,” says a member of Berlin-based duo Symbiz, who plugged in with a similar network in Uganda in 2017. “It was very visible to me on every occasion I made it to Africa. Somehow I have heard people mention multiple times how weirdly separated Chinese workers are from local people, which is a bit of a sad situation. But whenever there are people on the move, so is culture, which means there must be musical connections.”

Ahead of Slikback’s residency kickoff — he makes his China debut at Loopy, ground zero for Hangzhou’s experimental club scene, on Friday, April 19 — I spoke with Nyege Nyege co-founder Derek Debru about the potential for China/Africa cultural exchange along the lines of underground club culture, a form of expression that faces similar challenges and produces similarly perception-shattering talents in both places.

RADII: Through Nyege Nyege — your collective, label, festival, and studio — you have given a platform to artists from Uganda, Somalia, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania and beyond. Why is Kampala uniquely suited to host such a blend of people & sounds?

Derek Debru, Nyege Nyege: Uganda has always been renowned for its hospitality. Africans easily get a visa on arrival, the country is English-speaking, and, most importantly, Kampala is home to so many communities, making it a very cosmopolitan and pan-African city, especially the neighborhood where we live. Uganda also has a very welcoming policy towards refugees, hosting Africa’s biggest refugee population. Maybe there’s also a link there, making Uganda a perfect crossroad. Our neighbors include Kenya, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.

You’ve created relationships with festivals and labels overseas, such as Unsound and SHAPE platform. How have these exchanges helped promote your music in a way that simply running a label or a festival cannot?

Unsound, Shape, CTM, Nusasonic, We Are Europe, Africa Bass Culture, to name just a few, are important partners to allow our own community to interact with new networks and audiences, and sometimes also gain a certain type of validation that helps our artists and our sound gain recognition and opportunities.

What is your interest in China? What can you say about your plans to build a long-term partnership with Chinese labels/artists? Why was Slikback selected to go to China for a two-week immersion to kick this off?

Being curious people, we have a natural interest in China. Not only for the little we know, including some really forward labels we’ve come to interact with like Genome6.66Mbp and SVBKVLT, and experiencing the likes of Kilo Vee or Tzusing just makes it unavoidable not to think about China. Our first tour was with Kampire, where she was invited to play at Dada in Shanghai and Beijing, and that led us to get a bit more exposure there. It was our friend and notorious forward promoter Gaz [SVBKVLT] who got in touch with us about inviting Slikback, before anybody even knew who Slikback was.

Another artist, Hibotep, did a residency with Holly Herndon which was also attended by Min, a South Korean producer based in China, so lots of organic connections. Slikback has always had a fascination with Asia in general, and he was even supposed to study architecture in China before those plans fell through. Over the last year he’s also really connected with a lot of Chinese producers and so it will be easy for him to gel right in.

Last June you launched a new label, Hakuna Kulala, focusing on a small subset of artists in the Nyege Nyege orbit, including Slikback. How is this label different from Nyege Nyege tapes in terms of mission, sound, or geographical focus?

Hakuna Kulala was started when a few of the young producers we had been working with for some years started to blossom and make more and more interesting music. They needed a platform that was also more free, hence digital only, and so Slikback, Rey Sapienz and Don Zilla launched Hakuna Kulala. It features less endogenous scenes as on Nyege Nyege Tapes — like singeli, acholitronix, electrokadodi, etc — and more music from the NOW, what young producers are making in this moment and can bang right into any club.

China and Africa are two very big places that tend to be stereotyped and poorly understood in the West. That said, and without simplifying things, are there any patterns or trends you notice that producers/DJs from Africa & China have in common? What is the common basis for exchange between these two places and how do you hope to build on that with this tour and future collaborations with Chinese labels or artists?

I think there’s something common to the whole of the “Non-Western World,” which is that they are tired to be in a world where Western norms are imposed, along with many other things. I think many underground artists outside the West today are trying to detach themselves from that monolith and build the contours of new sonic explorations, new musical languages and experiences that do not fall into a simple category. Music, identities, politics, morals, culture, all those things are being reconfigured and challenged in music today, and I think that sort of urgency among the underground to carve a sound locally but also to be part of the rest of the world, is what seems to drive producers from both places, at least in terms of electronic music.

I think many underground artists outside the West today are trying to detach themselves from that monolith and build the contours of new sonic explorations

After Slikback comes back [to Uganda], he will invite Chinese artists to collaborate in the residency he’s part of at the Hakuna Kulala Studios, and then we will invite several Chinese DJs and producers to come to our festival in September, Nyege Nyege, after hopefully friendships blossom, great music gets made, new audiences are involved, and everyone wants to continue in that direction. Friendship is definitely important.

China has invested a lot of money in building projects in Africa over the last several years as part of its One Belt One Road initiative. What is the general feeling about China in Uganda or Kenya? Does this create unique barriers or opportunities for underground cultural exchange to occur between the two places?

Chinese people tend to live among themselves in Uganda or Kenya, so there’s actually very little interaction, even less in a club setting. So this is a chance to fill that gap and actually create situations in Uganda where Chinese and Ugandans party together to Chinese and Ugandan DJs. I think underground is always underground no matter where, and there’s a tendency for people that come from the fringes to connect naturally.

This is a chance to fill that gap and actually create situations in Uganda where Chinese and Ugandans party together to Chinese and Ugandan DJs

Anything else you want to add about your future plans for sending African artists to China, or hosting Chinese artists in Africa?

Nothing other than we’re really excited to see China and East Africa collaborate in this way, and this is just the beginning. Hopefully soon we’ll be able to benefit from cultural exchange programs and show our respective governments that these type of exchanges are very fruitful for cultural relations.

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If you’re in China, catch Slikback on 4/19 at Loopy, Hangzhou; 4/20 at ALL, Shanghai; 4/25 at OIL, Shenzhen; 4/26 at Monohouse, Nanjing; and 4/29 at Dada, Beijing.

Cover photo: Slikback (credit: Alim Karmali)

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Chinese users on Douyin (the local version of short video giant TikTok) have found a novel way to brighten up their regular commutes: time-travelling costume changes.

Basically, commuters walks into the subway wearing normal clothes, and then their outfits suddenly change to something super special when they get out of the train carriages — courtesy of a little video trickery. The premise is simple, but the results are pretty stunning.

From everyday dress to qipaos, from pyjamas to Hanfu, people are coming up with all kinds of outfits as part of the challenge.

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No Pain, No Gain: A TCM Practitioner on Chinese Medicine’s Principles of Pain

I place a small pyramid of herbs on Ms. Xu’s hand and light it with a stick of incense, carefully watching her face for signs of discomfort. “De le,” she says, “Enough.” I snatch away the burnt remains before they scald her palm. In total, three other students and I have burnt 300 of these moxa on exactly the same spot on Ms. Xu’s palm.

Ms. Xu suffers from trigger finger. When she curls her fourth finger, it initially refuses to bend back, before straightening with a faintly audible “pop.” The meaty area at the base of her finger is a bloodless white, and when I press it, she cries “Teng! Teng! It hurts! It hurts!”

Teng (“疼”) and its partner tong (“痛”) are a common refrain in the nephrology clinic where I work with chief physician Dr. Liu. Combined into tengtong, the two characters refer broadly to pain in terms like “chronic pain” (“慢性疼痛,” “manxing tengtong”). Individually, they attach to body parts to describe localized feelings of discomfort. Dr. Liu’s patients use these words to complain of headaches (“头疼,” “tou teng”) and painful urination (”尿痛,“ “niao tong”), as well as pains in the neck, stomach, legs, and eyes.

Just as often, “teng” and “tong” emerge as yelps when Dr. Liu and her students administer treatments of acupuncture, moxibustion, gua sha (刮痧 ) scraping, and ba guan (拔罐) cupping. One patient twitches and stiffens as Dr. Liu places each needle. Another cries out as the gua sha scraper travels down her back, leaving brilliant scarlet tracks in its wake. Afterwards, these patients leave claiming lasting relief from the pain that brought them to the clinic in the first place.

To people accustomed to meeting pain head-on by popping a painkiller, these pain-relief strategies might seem a little strange. Why do these methods of pain relief seem to hurt so much? And what can Chinese medicine tell us about how to deal with teng and tong?

Dr. Liu explains that two principles establish the basis for Chinese medicine’s perspective on pain. The first principle is bu tong ze tong (“不通则痛”): when things do not flow smoothly, there is pain. Qi and blood flow constantly through meridians, channels that crisscross the body to coordinate physiological function and deliver energy and nourishment. When this flow is obstructed, we feel pain.

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Dr. Liu uses her shoulder, which hurts during cold or windy weather, as an example. “Cold,” she tells me, “causes things to congeal.” Cold weather makes qi and blood turn slow and sluggish, building up into blockages that register as twinges and aches when she moves her shoulder.

Warmth and dampness can interrupt flow as well: think of overheated milk curdling, or the incremental ooze of fresh mud.

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Second is bu rong ze tong (“不荣则痛”): when things do not flourish, there is pain. If there isn’t enough qi or blood to go around, then some body parts express their need for nourishment through pain. Since this pain comes from lack, it can be more elusive. Dr. Liu describes it as yin tong (“隐痛”), or hidden pain. The patient may not be able to point out a specific point that is painful, experiencing instead an ache that diffuses through the body.

Biomedical pain is a signal that travels lightning-quick across the nervous system, bouncing from neuron to neuron until it reaches the brain. Painkillers work by simply stopping the signal in its tracks — but don’t necessarily intervene upon pain’s underlying causes.

Meanwhile Chinese medicine’s two principles of pain suggest strategies for treating pain by reversing the pathological processes that cause it. If the movement of qi and blood through the channels is obstructed, then a physician’s first response should be to restore flow, whereas if the painful area lacks nourishment, then a physician must find a way to provide the vital nutrients it needs.

This isn’t necessarily easy, however, since methods like scraping and cupping come at the price of pain. As Dr. Liu explains to one patient, “The more blocked you are, the more it’s going to hurt.” The angry red and purple bruises that linger on patients’ backs and necks stand testament to this: they are the signatures that cold, warm, or damp qi leave behind as they depart the body, freeing the channels’ flow.

So why did we burn all those herbs on Ms. Xu’s hand? The white spot on her hand is a sign of cold, which has caused the tendons in her hand to stiffen and contract. The heat of the moxa will warm the tendons, making them supple, flexible, and lively with qi and blood. As the number of moxa we burn climbs, freeing obstructions and returning Ms. Xu’s hand to a state of balanced flow, Ms. Xu’s pain should gradually disappear.

Wǒ Men Podcast: Under Red Skies – Inside the Minds of Chinese Millennials

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Karoline Kan is a second child born among the one child generation in 1989. In order to give birth to her, her mother hid from local officials for almost ten months. But the challenges didn’t end there — to her paternal grandparents, she was an unwanted girl, an idea that shadowed her whole childhood.

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Recently, she published Under Red Skies, widely touted as the first English-language memoir written by a Chinese millennial.

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China’s Newest Online Celebrity is a “Poetry-Quoting Hobo”

If you felt that Kenny G popping up in Kim Kardashian’s living room last month was some sort of harbinger of end times for us as a species, then you might want to look away now. In Shanghai, a story has emerged that perfectly, disturbingly captures the power and problems of China’s wanghong (“internet famous” and “influencer”) culture: a poetry-quoting “hobo” has had to ask people to leave him alone after his verses went viral and crowds eager to use him for their own TikTok video or livestream made his life a nightmare.

Even amid the odd mix of banal “lifestyle” tweets, US-goading “opinion pieces”, and Xi Jinping fawning that make up Party paper The Global Times‘ Twitter feed, this post summarizing the story stood out as especially bizarre:

Then there’s the actual article:

“Literature-loving hobo Shen Wei, 52, a ragged and unkempt homeless man who lives near Yanggao South Road Subway Station in East China’s Shanghai Municipality, has become an internet sensation after being filmed quoting from famous works, but he told his fans he just wants a quiet life.”

And that’s just the opening sentence.

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The attention from “online influencers” and livestreamers has gotten so great that Shen has had to issue repeated pleas for people to leave him alone, while some video footage shows him waving to onlookers from behind crowd control barriers. Under the term “Wandering Poet”, Weibo is now full of photos and videos of Shen surrounded by crowds of mobile phones, and of his “fans” holding lines of poetry (and in one case a marriage proposal) on bits of cardboard.

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Numerous commenters have hit out at those who have flocked to get a glimpse (through their mobile phone lens) of Shen. “It’s soothing to hear him speak,” one commenter has written under a widely-read news story on Shen, “Maybe in these violent times his wandering soul can awaken something in us all – but I hope people don’t go to disturb him.”

Another is more scathing: “Turning a person into a monkey and using them as a ladder for internet fame.”

At least there may ultimately be an upside to the whole affair. Shen was last seen being whisked away in a car by benefactors who took him to get showered, gave him a change of clothes and a haircut, and helped him have photos taken in order to gain a new ID card after his old one was lost. Naturally, the whole thing was filmed and posted online.

Incidentally, if you really want to do some good for homeless people in Shanghai, please consider supporting the work of The Renewal Center.