‘Can you own a rhythm?” asks British-Egyptian historian Dr Hannah Elsisi. She points out that pop charts around the world are infused with Africa-rooted music, from reggaeton, dancehall and hip-hop to African pop itself. “But who benefits from this music made from migration? How do we understand and credit the labour that goes into the beat of our culture?”
These vexed questions struck Elsisi when she came across a 2023 US lawsuit. Jamaican dancehall production duo Steely and Clevie alleged their 1989 track Fish Market originated the dembow rhythm that has since become a staple of reggaeton and countless pop productions. Over 1,000 songs using a version of that rhythm, some of them by the most streamed artists in the world including Bad Bunny and Drake, have been targeted by the pair in the ongoing copyright case.
It made Elsisi thinking about how and where rhythms are founded, and “how music itself can be an archive for histories that aren’t written,” she says. “When we move, owing to war, economic crisis, slavery or other factors, we bring music that mutates into new culture. It bears a trace of our history. Yet the lineages of these sounds haven’t been accounted for.”
Elsisi took on the task of tracing those lineages. Contacting some of her favourite producers and musicians from across the African diaspora, spanning 20 locations including Egypt, Kenya, Brazil, South Africa, America and England, Elsisi founded Chromesthesia, an independently released compilation album and a forthcoming 13-hour performance at Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht that aims to “map centuries of movement and resistance as they have been inscribed in sound”.
It’s a gargantuan undertaking – aiming to somehow illustrate an evolution of sound from Yoruba drumming to slavery-induced migration and onwards – but rather than present a comprehensive overview, Elsisi stresses the project is about “making connections… forming through-lines between continents and rhythmic tropes. It’s as much about listeners finding connections as it is about the musicians.”
The project was initiated during a series of residencies in late 2023, inviting producers to come together in Italy and Egypt to simply share playlists of their favourite music. “There was no pressure to make anything, it was just about listening to each other,” says Elsisi. “But they soon began recognising similarities and interests and once they left, they kept the relationship going to make new music. We ended up with a record made in 25 cities around the world.”
The resulting nine tracks of Chromesthesia: The Colour of Sound, Vol 1 deliver an unpredictable cacophony of rhythm. Opening with the dark drones and Arab folk jizan rhythm of Tunisian producer Deena Abdelwahed and Miami-based producer Nick León, the record goes on to traverse bass-heavy reggaeton, echoes of dubstep, trance-influenced Venezuelan raptor house and eerie free jazz. The compilation is the opposite of ethnomusicological collections of field-recorded folk sounds: it’s loud, fuzzy and full of gut-shaking bass.
“It was a creative awakening for me,” South African rapper Sho Madjozi says of her time at the Egypt residency. “I forged a deep connection with the young Egyptian musicians there and we ended up making a lot of stuff. I kept seeing the links between Egypt and South Africa and it was exhilarating to write about things we all have in common.”
Madjozi’s track, Zamaleky, featuring Egyptian hip-hop group Double Zuksh, spans the length of the African continent, incorporating the slow shuffle of South African amapiano and raucous melody of Egyptian mahragan, with lyrics in Bantu dialect and Arabic. Closer to home, London-based producer Gaika aimed to represent the city’s merging of diaspora cultures on the darkly atmospheric, dubstep-referencing Time On.
“Someone once described my music as what you hear in your head on the bus home from the club and this track is what it means to be in London at night,” he says. “It’s empowering to be part of Chromesthesia, since it feels like it’s presenting a different experience of Africanness – sounds we often hear but don’t always know about.”
Performances at the 13-hour live presentation will range from Yoruba djembe drumming ensembles to an exploration of Egyptian electronic music and Arabic poetry from producer 3Phaz and singer Msylma, Haitian revolutionary music with jazz saxophonist Jowee Omicil, and South African civil rights with rapper Yaya Bey, a rich and populous gathering that also “fights the tokenisation of POC in festival programmes,” Elsisi says.
With plans for further albums to continue exploring the musical links between the African diaspora, Chromesthesia could easily become a life’s work. “It’s almost shocking that no one’s done this before,” Gaika says. “And to keep it independent and artist-centred, more than anything it just feels like a testament to what we can do when we work together. Ultimately, this music belongs to us.”
