Music
Listen to these essential club bangers from Portugal
Portuguese club and electronic music has come a long way since Underground Sound Of Lisbon took on the world with their anthem, So Get Up. Here are the tracks you need to know.
Lisbon's electronic music scene is in full bloom – and it is also one of Europe's most unique. It started out, like so many others around the world, in thrall to the house, techno and rave sounds reverberating out of the US, UK and Germany. But the dark, intense acid sound of Underground Sound Of Lisbon has morphed into something entirely different over the past three decades. Inspired by modern Lusophone sounds brought into Portugal by migrants from Angola and Cape Verde, a younger generation have twisted house and techno into something more global, infectious and culturally distinctive.
As Lisbon prepares to host Red Bull Culture Clash on March 2, where the four crews are sure to deliver a host of different Portuguese (and beyond) party sounds, we highlight a few of Lisbon's most essential club bangers over the past 30-odd years.
Underground Sound Of Lisbon – So Get Up (1994)
So Get Up was Portugal's home-grown club anthem and a track that instigated the country’s move away from just rock and fado music. Initially released as the B-side to their 1994 Chapter One track it features a doom-forecasting monologue – “The end of the world is upon us, pretty soon it will all turn to dust” – from Greek-born Californian artist Darin Pappas, who was also a rapper in Portugal’s Ithaka outfit. A hard-thumping and squelchy acid monster in the same continuum lineage as music by Joey Beltram and Hardfloor, So Get Up took on the world when the Tribal America label licensed it and gave it to Junior Vasquez and Danny Tenaglia to remix.
Rui Da Silva – Touch Me (2001)
Underground Sound Of Lisbon were two men – DJ Vibe and Rui Da Silva. After co-creating Portugal’s first big-hitting club track, Da Silva got an even tighter grip on the dancefloor seven years later when, in 2001, he joined forces with UK singer Cassandra Fox to record the spangled house behemoth Touch Me. It wasn’t just a chart-topper at home in Portugal; it also made him the first-ever Portuguese artist to claim the UK top spot.
DJ Marfox – Funk Em Kuduro (2006)
Inspired by the aggressive mix of zouk, rumba, kuduro and rave played by his mentor DJ Nervoso, DJ Marfox (real name: Marlon Silva) started making music in 2002 in his early teens. In 2006, this track of his was included on the compilation DJs Do Guetto Vol.1, a set of tracks by a collective of young producers doing their own thing – "Our grime," claimed DJ Marfox later – from the isolated high-rise estates on the edges of Lisbon. Funk Em Kuduro was an early example of batida, infusing fidgety footwork house with the Angolan club sound of kuduro. DJ Marfox took the sound out of the "ghetto" with the help of the Lisbon label Príncipe Discos and he remains an important name, releasing music on Lit City Trax and Warp.
Buraka Som Sistema – Sound Of Kuduro (2008)
Sound Of Kuduro is a brash, noisy blend of kuduro – which translates as "hard ass" – and the fidgety house music that, refracted through African and Brazilian influences, has really caught on in Portugal. The sound that Buraka Som Sistema founders João Barbosa (aka Branko) and Rui Pité (aka DJ Riot) came up with was inspired by the African beats they heard coming from cars in the Lisbon suburb they grew up in as well as they diversity of a city that, Branko said, is like a "Bermuda triangle” connecting Brazil, Angola, and Cape Verde. Recorded in Angola, this huge track features appearances from Angolan kuduro pioneer DJ Znobia, plus M.I.A. and Puto Prata.
DJ Firmeza – Alma Do Meu Pai (2015)
Lisbon's Principe Discos label – which has its own show on Red Bull Radio – has been the premier outlet for the Lisbon club sound for nearly a decade. They've supported the elder statesmen of the scene, such as DJ Nervoso and Marfox, and they continue to support the next generation. Like the incredible Nidia Minaj, who released her latest dancefloor-slaying album Nídia é Má, Nídia é Fudida at the end of 2017, and DJ Firmeza, whose twisted, polyrhythmic take on batida – as showcased on 2015's essential Alma Do Meu Pai – shows just how ambitious the current crop of Lisbon's dance music producers are.