Program

Since the appearance of his cult breakthrough debut Tuli Banyo released on Hakuna Kulala in 2018, Ugandan conscious rapper and MC, Ecko Bazz has challenged perceptions of East Africa’s burgeoning rap scene. His style is hard to categorize blending elements of grime, dancehall and US hip-hop and twisting politicized lyrics in Luganda that explore violence, religion, drug abuse or the poverty in the Ugandan slums. This personality anchors his debut album Mmaso, an explosive call to action that balances his manic presence with production from MC Yallah collaborator Debmaster, Kenyan club futurist Slikback, Berlin-based Japanese beatmaker DJ Die Soon and the inimitable DJ Scotch Rolex.

Mmaso is driven by Ecko Bazz’s kinetic performance on the mic. Anyone that’s had the privilege of seeing him live will know what to expect, and his unadulterated flow is immediately focused on the grinding title track. The rapper alternates freely between sober truths and hyperactive screams, flipping between intensity from verse to verse. On Lwaky?, an anxious Debmaster beat underpins Bazz’s visceral hedonism bending his rhymes in double and half-time and wrenching his voice gymnastically over 808 booms and claps.

Ecko Bazz recently collaborated with British producer AYA / Loft on a new track that will be released as a single on Hyperdub in the coming weeks. The track Ntabala by Ecko Bazz and Still is included in Still’s + KIKOMMANDO (Pan and Hakuna Kulala). The duo also produced a mixtape for Crack Magazine.

Links:
ECKO BAZZ - MMASO (official video) - https://youtu.be/qQ1k44yhafU
ECKO BAZZ – Ntabala (Rolex Riddim) – Produced by STILL: https://youtu.be/LrIxJdJsBZg
https://hakunakulala.bandcamp.com/album/mmaso
https://hakunakulala.bandcamp.com/album/kyusa-embela
https://www.instagram.com/eckobazz
https://www.facebook.com/bazuuka.male
https://www.facebook.com/hakunakulal
https://www.instagram.com/hakuna.kulala
https://www.facebook.com/nyegetapes
https://www.instagram.com/nyegenyege
https://www.instagram.com/swampbooking
https://www.facebook.com/swampbooking

Debmaster

makes Gangsta Bleep music
French, although a „Berliner“ for 10 years, Debmaster, aka Julien Dblois, is the eclectic producer behind a number of exciting releases and live shows. While Debmaster had a lot of fun playing live with his noisy family in Berlin, hins encounter, in 2015, with Nyege Nyege’s overactive scene and Hakuna Kulala was the perfect outlet for him when they asked him to send crazy beats for artists who records weekly in a DIY studio in Kampala. He is now producing every day for Hakuna Kulala.

Links:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100035478592074
https://www.instagram.com/debmaster_the_real_one
https://soundcloud.com/debmaster

Electronic/bass producer FlexFab and Kenyan rapper Ziller Bas storm into 2022 with their highly anticipated debut album “MUGOGO!”, out on the 23rd March 2022!
Launched in 2020 under the MUGOGO! banner, FlexFab & Ziller Bas rapidly captured at-tention for their solid and singular mix of modern club African music, bass/electronic and rap.

Official website: https://www.flexfabmusic.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flexfab/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/flexfab
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/FLEXFABmusic/videos

Spotify: https://link.flexfabmusic.com/FlexFabSpotify
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/flexfab
Twitter: https://twitter.com/flexfabmusic
Bandcamp: https://flexfab.bandcamp.com/music
TikTok : https://link.flexfabmusic.com/TikTok
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ziller_bas/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Ziller-Bas-2054402061463028
Spotify: https://link.flexfabmusic.com/ZillerBasSpotify

THE STORY:
Behind the musical duo MUGOGO ! are Anthony Baraka and Pablo Fernandez. The first uses his mic with virtuosity. The other blurs the boundaries of genres with compositions drawing inspiration from various corners of the planet. The result is a spontaneous musical alchemy with plural longitudes and latitudes. The music is inspired by friendship, life, and offers a musical journey that goes beyond borders.
The story began in August 2019, when FlexFab was on tour in Eastern Africa. During a show in the city of Kilifi on the Kenyan coast, a local rapper named Ziller Bas insists on plugging in a microphone and improvising. He improvises on a few songs, and something magical happens, the chemistry is immediatew. They create a spectrum of sound that does not yet belong to either one but resonates like a spark of unintentional genius. The two artists stay in touch, and six months later, in January 2020, FlexFab returns to Kilifi to record an album with Ziller Bas.
Having a hard time to find recording materials in town, FlexFab brings along the necessary studio equipment and settles in a small house near Kilifi. Video director Raphael Piguet (responsible for some of FlexFab’s video clips) joins FlexFab to document this adventure. It’s in this particular and improvised context that, during 2 weeks of intensive work, they create 14 songs, 3 video clips and a documentary. Summer 2021, despite the forced break caused by the pandemic, the two allies reunite in Kilifi and record new tracks with the same passion.

ABOUT FLEXFAB:
FlexFab, whose real name is Pablo Fernandez, is an electronic music producer based in Switzerland. Born in 1989 to a Swiss mother and a Spanish immigrant father, he made his first compositions in 2008. Immersed and rooted in the hip-hop culture from his teen years, it makes total sense for him to take the first steps in the world of sampling and music production with a MPC2000XL and some dusty vinyls from the 1970s.

In 2011, freshly graduated with a federal diploma as a Sound Technician, FlexFab released his first 12-track project entitled “Flex Sunday”. It is during this period and influenced by the beatmakers scene of L.A. ( more precisely the one gravitating around the avant-garde parties “Low end theory” ) that FlexFab naturally begins to move away from the productions purely reserved for rappers and marvels at enriching his compositions with more and more electronic music – thus freeing himself from the codes of the slightly purist rap milieu.

In 2014, he released his first solo album “Manoir” on the Feelin’ Music label. The compositions were subtly mixing organic elements with electronic sounds, accompanied by a strong visual aesthetic that he deploys during his live performances. He quickly stood out in the Swiss musical sphere and the following year won several awards, including Best Artist and Best Track of the Year in the Electronic music category at the M4music, Best Emerging Artist and finalist at the Swiss Music Awards. During the following years, FlexFab spread internationally and gained several million listeners. He was invited to perform at many clubs and festivals around the world, including Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Belgrade, Phnom Penh, Saigon, Bogota, Lima, Quito, Nairobi, Amsterdam, Dublin, Berlin, Brussels and Paris to name just a few.

Accompanied and supported by his loyal manager Sandro Brero, FlexFab quickly decided to release all his music independently. Several musical projects followed, including compositions for theatre plays, the creation of the sound identity for the national radio station Couleur 3, a collaboration with a symphony orchestra, as well as various multidisciplinary projects, including a virtual reality project which ended up in the official selection of the prestigious Sundance Film Festival in the United States.

2019 marks an important turning point with his second album entitled “Ex-Voto”, confirming his desire to mix and highlight musical genres from various horizons.

“Ex-Voto” features local and international collaborations and has been critically acclaimed. It features various artists including the Malaysian singer The Venopian Solitude, the South African group Batuk, the Egyptian musician Rozzma and the talented Swiss producer Sim Citizen.
From the very beginning, his visual language has been an important part of his artistic practice. He notably uses the works of Jeanne Odette and Claudévard, his grandparents whose art heritage takes a preponderant place in his visual identity. With touring and his raising visibility, he is increasingly led to travel and to collaborate with artists across the globe. In 2019, he was invited by the FLEE collective to meet and create a record together with Kenyan artists during a two week residency in Nairobi. This was followed by a tour in East Africa where he met Ziller Bas during one show in the coastal town of Kilifi. It was only in 2020 that FlexFab & Ziller Bas finally joined forces to set up the MUGOGO ! project. The rest is history !

ABOUT ZILLER BAS
Ziller Bas, whose real name is Baraka Anthony Shujaa, is a rapper from Kiwandani, a village in the Kenyan coastal town of Kilifi. Born in 1995 in Kilifi, he is the eldest of four siblings. He started writing music when he was in high school in Kilifi Mtwapa. Due
to the influence and pervasiveness of hip-hop culture in Kenya and especially in his neighbourhood in Kiwandani, he soon started to write rap lyrics. Ziller Bas was born into the Giriama tribe together with nine other tribes in the coastal region forming the large Mijikenda group. In 2012 he created his own dialect, “Swengflow”, which mixes English, Swahili and a third Bantu language, Giriama, thus creating his own unique flow and lyrical language. He likes to approach writing his lyrics in two distinct ways either without music, which is more like writing a poem, or with a more standard approach, using instrumentals.
His lyrics are inspired by life around him in Kilifi, a life steeped in poverty, social inequality, corruption, lack of access to culture and education. He also covers a range of topics from love to collective consciousness, from the importance of highlighting one’s ancestral culture and community to ego trips such as the track “Fullu !”, to more relaxed and festive topics such as in «Coco Juice», or the struggle in his hood such as depicted in «Vituko». For him, community and family play a major role in the protection and education of Kilifi’s youth.

This is why, during the past few years he was highly involved in several collectives and local groups to support the new generation of artists in Kilifi by organizing writing classes, art awareness and weekly open mic jams to give voice to the young talents in his neighborhood. Kilifi is full of musicians, dancers, rappers and creators of all kinds. He quickly established a strong artistic entourage. Working odd jobs during the day, he spends most of his free time working on his lyrics, his technique and his flow. It’s this daily work and perseverance that give him a certain recognition in his city and allows him to express himself beyond the county of Kilifi. 2020 marks a turning point in his musical career : by meeting FlexFab he produces his first studio album which allows him to deploy all of his art. He can now have this new perspective of sharing his talent, his culture and art beyond the Kenyan borders.