Tropical Boobs: a counterbalance to Couleur Café

(Maga Bo)

As a counterbalance to Couleur Café, whose global programming is a bit disappointing, Rebel Up! is organising an unofficial after-party in the Bouillon Kube. Tropical Boobs offers a chance to let your hair down to some rougher world beats on the theme of the “global dancehall”. The organisers make the point that “Couleur Café didn’t even have any interest in or room for Maga Bo, can you imagine that?”

“We’re taking the piss, but still, not programming someone like Maga Bo at Couleur Café is appalling,” says Seb Bassleer of Rebel Up! So why, then, is the Rio de Janeiro-based US producer a must for the Couleur Café line-up? “His world music is contemporary. It is a perfect blend of electronica and world music, without losing track of traditional sounds. Afro-Brazilian atmospheres are to the fore, with a layer of electronica on top of that.” His album Quilombo do Futuro, by the way, was one of the best global-beats records of 2012.

On 29 June Couleur Café will close at around 1 am. Tropical Boobs aims to be an after-party with more danceable and electronic world music, as, in Bassleer’s opinion, that’s what the festival lacks. “Couleur Café has become too urban. Over the last few years it has mainly offered hip hop and pop, with less and less world music.” Rebel Up! is organising the party in cooperation with the female crew Tropical Boobs (which has given its name to the party too) and Silver Canary, a roots reggae sound system that works with a Colombian and two Angolan MCs. Maga Bo has invited the South African rapper MC Teba, while the Frenchman FI$H€RPRIC€ will serve up some rawer urban sounds, including baile funk (electronic dance music from Rio de Janeiro), moombahton (a fusion of house and reggaeton), and trap (a fusion of hip hop and dubstep), whereas the people from Rebel Up! themselves will tend to explore more Latino and African moods.

Tropical Boobs Party •

29/6, 23.00, €4, Bouillon Kube, rue Vlogaertstraat 4, Sint-Gillis/Saint-Gilles, www.bouillonkube.com, www.rebelup.org